The question is: have you had any palets Bretons before?
If you are French or have lived in France, the answer would be yes. For others, you probably have not eaten any Palets Bretons.
I could not resist this recipe. I am not being patriotic just now (no! 🙂 ), this is just that I LOVE those little biscuits and you can’t find them in Australia.
So easy… yes, really!
They are very easy to make. The only limitation is that they cannot be placed to cook on a flat sheet as they need support. Turned out that I had a silicone mould for mini-muffin (which I never use normally) just perfect for it!
You can keep them in a cookie box for a couple weeks easily (please not in the fridge, just in an airtight container or cookie box). They are perfect with a cup of tea, with desserts like yogurt or fruit compotes and can even be used for lunch boxes snack.
There are only few ingredients, same as in most cookies: flour, butter (of course, we are speaking Brittany), eggs, sugar and baking powder.
Now I am sure you feel like making them!
Read on for the recipe…
Ingredients:
Makes the quantity you can see on the above photo.
140 g caster sugar
3 egg yolks
150 g soft butter (either use unsalted butter and add 4 g of salt) or use salted butter
200 g plain white flour
15 g baking powder
Method:
In a first time, you need to make the dough:
Mix egg yolks and sugar until white and creamy (use a whisk)
Add the soft butter and combine (swap the whisk for a wooden spoon or similar)
Add the flour and baking powder
Bring the mixture into a ball. Wrap in cell film and place in the fridge for a few hours or even better overnight.
The second part is the cutting and cooking:
Preheat the oven to 170 °C.
If you are using metal muffin trays or pastry rings, grease them with butter and place the pastry rings on a sheet of baking paper on the cooking tray. If you are using a silicone mould, no need to grease.
My improvised cutter and moulds for the Palets Bretons
Lightly dust with flour your kitchen bench and roll the dough to 5 mm thick.
Cut out round shapes for your palets bretons using either one of the pastry ring or if using a muffin tray or similar something in your kitchen of same diameter as your moulds (for example: a small glass, an egg cup, a towel ring).
Place in the cooking moulds.
Cook for 15 minutes or until golden brown. Turn over or slide on a cooling rack.
How to call a dessert which is no exactly what you intend to do? Lets call this one a chestnut raspberry tiramisu.
The background
I had all these chestnuts I wanted to use. The kids and I got excited and after having eaten a whole bad of them somehow, the second bag was going untouched for a while. This is a classic situation in a family, isn’t it? So I used most of them to make a chestnut puree. I had in mind to do a beautiful chestnut raspberry layered cake. I also had this great pot of mascarpone in the fridge and had been going through the cookbook “80 Authentic Italian Sweet Treats, Cakes and Desserts” by Laura Zavan.
Now, a very important factor, it is very cold in my kitchen at the moment (for those who don’t know, we have been going through renovations). It would have felt like around 5°C when I prepared the dessert wrapped in many layers.
The process….
I created a short crust pastry, let it rest for a while in the fridge, though I could have left it on the kitchen bench considering the freezing weather this weekend. I rolled the dough quite thin (3 mm), baked it to a beautiful golden colour.
I used a raspberry coulis I had in the freezer to create my bottom “layer”. Obviously I needed to add some gelatine. I prepared that step at the same time as the dough. My advice to you is check your volumes and don’t put too much gelatine. It was a bit too jellified to my taste.
I wanted to obtain a chestnut mousse but using the mascarpone. I mixed 250 g of chestnut puree, initially 200 g of mascarpone, 50 g of softened butter. At this stage, I realised I had not though it through well enough and that my dessert was not going to be what I intended. I used the rest of the mascarpone (400 g total), some sugar syrup (I keep some handy in the kitchen) and 50-100 g of pieces of raspberry frozen. I was betting on the mascarpone and butter to set.
Construction time (a bit like leggos!), the disk at the bottom, the jellified raspberry coulis over the disk, then the mascarpone-chestnut-raspberry mousse. Cell wrap on top and in the fridge!
I didn’t know if it would have set overnight but after a few hours, it had not moved and I was running out of time. I placed the dessert in the freezer where it set just on time.
Result:
In the end, it was quite good. Next time, if there is one, I would add a little gelatine to the mascarpone.
I had also prepared a backup dessert, a chocolate cake with roasted strawberries. As a result, we had plenty to chose from and a fair amount of left overs. Did you know, some desserts freeze really well? You can have a nice finish to your meal in no time!
My kitchen is being taken over by my children! It started with a menu written by Ambrine a few weeks ago, then a tentative to make a chocolate dip Nutella like which saw the stock of chocolate seriously reduced (I wasn’t home), a tentative to make caramel in the micro-wave (with chocolate, I wasn’t home either), a double serie of strawberry & white chocolate cookies, because the first ones were eaten sooooo quickly. This weekend, we were treated by a full breakfast with coddled eggs. And now a massive bunch of chocolate hazelnut friands for a school assignment.
The latest item was not to be so significant until a few kids at school came together with the idea to bring in their goods to the class. The assignment reads “Masterchef: your masterchef challenge…Bake some cookies for your family. Use photos or a drawing to show how you shared them equally.” It seems like the brief has been adapted to fit the fun of sharing!
You are in for a treat, the strawberry and white chocolate cookies
So lets share today the strawberry and white chocolate cookies. Children love them (tested for you on a few different families). Personally, I really like them warm, when not completely cooled yet, simply because I am not a big fan of white chocolate. Small warning, it is also quite sweet. What I really like is that the recipe shared the fats between cream cheese and butter, it brings in a really nice taste which works perfectly with strawberries and white chocolate.
Recipe from the blog omgchocolatedesserts adapted for units and technical preferences (more practical, less washing up too!).
Ingredients
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt (remove if using salted butter)
1/4 cup butter-softened
120 g cream cheese
3/4 cup caster sugar (1/2 cup is probably enough, I find them a bit sweet)
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup chopped fresh strawberries
2 tablespoon lemon juice
150 g white chocolate-chopped
Method
Preheat the oven to 180ºC.
Pour fresh lemon juice over chopped strawberries, drain them after a few minutes. Chop in pieces as convenient (not less than one centimetre)
Beat butter with sugar and cream cheese until it’s light and fluffy.
Add egg and vanilla and mix well.
Toss together 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour, salt, chopped white chocolate, chopped stawberries and baking powder.
Add flour mixture to the wet mixture and fold in gently. Either use a large scoop or your hand.
Drop heaping tablespoon of batter onto a baking sheet covered with baking paper. Make sure to leave a couple centimetres space in between.
Set the cookies in the refrigerator for 5-10 minutes before baking.
You can choose to bake them for 13-15 minutes until the edges become golden brown, they will be very chewy and quite friable, I baked my second round with spots of golden brown over the top, it was a bit easier to handled and when cold they are more tasty (more cooked).
Transfer the baking paper to the cooling rack (slide it). Let the cookies cool a few minutes and them remove from the baking paper.
Yes, we do, we all love them! They are the crepes!
First, a little note on vocabulary. We will agree here that crepes and pancakes are two very different things. The first will refer to the very thin hot cake, originally from Brittany in western France. The second is the English thick version of the flat hot cake, generally served for breakfast.
Origin of the crepes
A quick look on various website will give you the history of crepes. The word crêpe is French for pancake and is derived from the Latin crispus meaning “curled”. Crêpes originated in Brittany (fr. Breton), in the northwest region of France, which lies between the English Channel to the north and the Bay of Biscay to the south. Crêpes were originally called galettes, meaning flat cakes.
Around the 12th century buckwheat was introduced in Brittany from the east. Buckwheat thrived on the desolate and rocky Breton moors and is called “sarrasin” or “blé noir” (black wheat) due to the dark specs that are often found in it. Buckwheat is one of the plants of the polygonaceae family, which also includes rhubarb and sorrel. It is high in fiber and is an excellent plant source of easily digestive protein and contains all eight essential amino acids. Another benefit is that it is gluten free.
White flour crêpes appeared only at the turn of the 20th century when white wheat flour which formerly had been as expensive as sugar, honey or meat, became affordable. White flour crêpes are as thin as buckwheat crêpes but softer as a result of the eggs, milk, and butter used to make them.
In France, crepes are generally made out of wheat flour. In the southern part of Normandie and in Bretagne (Britany), buckweat is also used to make crepes, there are then called “galettes” and generally served with a savoury fill. Note that buckwheat is gluten free.
Crepes recipes may vary between regions. In the northern and eastern part of France, beer is often included in the batter, it does a great job at lightening the dough and makes very thin and delicious crepes. Also, quite often, the dough does not have any sugar.
If you are making crepes (at home that is), you will need a crepe pan. I have tried in other pans, I can tell you, it is not easy because of the high edges and because your pan must strictly be not sticky and not scratched.
Note that large non-stick (tefal or other) fry-pans are perfect to make galettes as you need them larger and the buckwheat galette is ticker making it easier to handle.
Filling for savoury crepes or galettes
Savoury
Galettes or savoury crepes are generally filled on demand. The filling is placed on the galette when the galette is turned over while cooking, the filling ingredients are added and the four “corners” of the crepes pulled an folded towards the middle to contain the filling (you end up with a square shape). The basic filling is a full egg, ham and cheese, but there are many variations. Combinations of the following ingredients make a great galette:
eggs
tasty cheddar / gruyere type of cheese
ham
Mushrooms (often sliced and precooked)
Bacon dices or “lardons” as known in France, precooked
Cream
sliced cooked potatoes
You can also use blue cheese (I personally love it in savoury gallettes), green asparagus, smoke salmon, salmon, tomatoes,…the list is endless!
SWEET
Sweet crepes are delicious when they remain simple! The most simple fillings are:
white sugar with (optional) a dash of lemon juice (yum!)
soft brown sugar
jam
honey
lemon curd
chocolate / Nutella.
One crepe recipe which became quite famous is “Crepes Suzettes”, this requires a little more work.
Many of you would have seen crepes filled and then folded in two and then further folded to form a triangle. This is not the case everywhere. In my family, we rolled them, much more fun especially when you are a kid!
And now the recipes
The recipe of the galette can be found HERE. This is my adopted recipe.
For the crepes, the recipe is quite different. The recipe below calls for a resting time of 2 hours, if you don’t have that time in front of you, it will also work, the crepes will be thicker. If you have no beer or prefer not to use beer, use water and milk. Crepes are very forgiving in terms of ratios. Careful not using only milk or your crepes will be brittle. If you increase the quantity of eggs, your crepes will be quite thick and filling.
Ingredients:
This will easily serve 4 people for dessert. Left overs can be covered and placed in the fridge.
500 g of plain flour
4 eggs (depending on size)
1 beer (300 ml)
1/2 cup oil (sunflower)
1/2 L milk
water
Method:
Place the flour in a large bowl, make a hole (we all it a well in French) in the middle and place in it, the eggs, oil, beer and milk.
Mix with a whisk until smooth. You may have a few small lumps, don’t worry to much at this stage. The batter will be quite thick, you want to make it thinner by adding water, the consistency must be the one a drinking yogurt.
Let it rest for at least two hours.
Get yourself ready to cook, things can go quickly, get organised, everything must be in close reach.
To cook, use crepe pan (s). Heat up the pan, when hot pour 2/3 of a ladle in the pan, by turning your wrist (while holding the pan), spread the batter over the bottom of the pan. Pour out the excess if too really too much. Pop any bubbles if they form.
Cook until the sides are brown AND the bottom is fully dry (no wet spots), turn over, cook for a bit less. Transfer to a plate.
Now 3 MAJOR tips:
The first crepe if most of the time a write off (for the cook)
If you pan needs a bit of greasing, cut a potatoe and stick the section cut at the end of a fork. Place the flat edge in oil then “paint” the bottom of the fry-pan. This method will limit the amount of grease you use and avoid using multiple absorbent paper sheets. If you have a piece of lard, it works perfectly well too.
Tip – use a cut potato to grease your pan
The heat under the fry-pan will need adjusting, somewhere between low and high. It will take a few crepes to get there.
Keep your cooking stocks please!! Seriously, you would be loosing so much yummyness. Their best use? A risotto for sure!
What stock? For example when you cook mussels, you will end up with a broth, won’t you? Filter it and freeze it. If you cook a casserole, you may end up with some quite tasty sauce. Put it in the fridge, the next day remove the fat that has accumulated and is hard on the top part of the stock and freeze until you need it. If you are more adventurous and cook ham hocks, you MUST keep the stock, trust me this will be amazing (I tried!).
There are plenty types of risottos, the basic tasks are the same: fry a bit your rice, add condiment, garlic, a glass of wine, then your stock and cook slowly. Some chefs would tell you that risottos must be mixed regularly, other will say not to touch it, I think this comes from regional variations. Some risottos will come with tons of cheese (yum), some other have no cheese. There are so many options!
Vegetarian people as much as non-vegetarian, this is a must do, so good! I made it so many times since, varying things along.
Now, what prompted me to write this post was one made this week using a mussel broth (moules marinieres) and placing a whole fish in it. It took no time. Here you go!
Why not a small pannacotta to finish of a weekday dinner? Why not, indeed.
Pannacottas are rather quick to do, easy (plenty browny points here!!!), you can (have to actually) make them in advance, put them in the fridge an forget about them until serving time.
Why a pannacotta this week? Well, cooking in the evening is becoming a little less amusing as my kitchen has no doors now and the weather has got much much colder suddenly (cold, really cold!). So mid day cooking in lieu of a coffee during a work break (obviously while working at home) is a solution some days.
We (my 7 y.o and myself to be exact) have been following Masterchef (browse through this link, there are a few interesting ideas an recipes). One night was a special Nigella Lawson challenge and include the preparation of a coffee pannacotta. I did not understand why everyone was having a fit to ensure it was perfectly silky, mine always seem to end up that way. The one I really love is a chai tea pannacotta. CLICK CLICK for the recipe. Apparently (according to Masterchef) the test is having a sexy wobble! I remembered that just in time, check the video below. AhAh! I would have preferred serving it with a rhubarb compote (which was ready) but the children insisted to have it with chocolate sauce as in Masterchef.
Another mid-day cooking dish was a pork belly roast. I cook it on top of sliced apple and garlic heads, it is great dish, just have to prepare a few greens and dinner’s ready!
Has autumn finally arrived in Sydney? At our place, the deciduous trees are dropping their leaves and the evenings and early morning are rather fresh. I already hinted at it last week with my post on chestnuts. Today is about autumn cooking, illustrated by a few dishes made at home in the last week or so.
On another matter, the subscription link is back running, check the side of the blog on a laptop or the bottom of the page on a mobile phone.
Let’s start by a breakfast treat…
I decided to give another do to the croissants dough recipe and make viennoiseries a bit different to croissants and pains au chocolat. Because the batches are quite big, I freeze the pieces directly after shaping them on a tray (then pack away). The night before I want them, I put them out of the freezer on a baking sheet and let them unfreeze and rise. My problem was that I had very inconsistent risings and end results, but this time I think I worked it out! The best is that the kids and I made that together, or rather they laid the custard, sultanas, rolled the dough in a log, wrapped it, I only did the cutting of the log.
Pains aux raisins
And you know what? Today is not all about sweet dishes!
The below was a quick cook, 60 minutes to dinner, a bit like a Masterchef challenge. I am quite ahppy with the end result!
I prepared a mushroom and fresh salmon tart (pastry included) served with a roasted pumpkin, beans and baby spinach salad. And dessert with that? This is where a 7 y.o. child comes handy, this was a rapid apple cake, a recipe known in my family as a (hold on!) “Rombidi Rondidi Radada) but more generally in the wider northern part of France countryside as a 5,4,3,2,1 . For the salmon tart and salad, I had my 4 y.o. as kitchen hand (cutting ends of the beans), mixing, placing the mushrooms and salmon in the tart.
Fresh Salmon TartMixed green and roasted pumpkin salad
Another night, another dish, a soup!
Chestnut Soup
Doing a chestnut soup had been in my mind for a while, but I did not want to add cream and make it too heavy. I quickly browsed recipes, again I did not feel like adding pumpkin or many vegetables. I was after something where chestnut was the hero with a little something to ensure balance in flavours.
Now, chestnuts are nutritious, regardless what you do with them. A bowl of that soup can make your dinner! In south-eastern France and in Corsica, where they grow plentiful on rocky slopes, they helped the populations go through hard times.
This chestnut soup recipe contains one small onion, one parsnip, one potato (probably not that necessary), two pears and plenty chestnuts! And the peeling of the chestnuts did not take so much time and was easy (place the incised chestnuts in cold water and brink to the boil!).
Quails season is also now, or at least the natural hunting season
When I was a child, my grandfather would install nets in trees and bushes to catch quails in autumn. I have never been with him, I remember the stories and numerous return home empty handed! This week, I got a tray of quails from Vic Meats at the Sydney Fish Market (I went there to get some mussels), it was a little treat. Since I was again cooking at the last minute, I did not spend too much time in books or websites looking at recipes. I do not cook quails very often. For those I mixed together some turmeric, paprika, a little sumac, some ground vanilla beans, made a paste by adding olive oil and rubbed the mix around the birds, Inside I placed some fresh garden herbs and crushed garlic. The rest is easy: brown the quails on both sides, then add one cut of dry white wine, salt, about one cup of red-currents, 2 large shallots sliced, salt and pepper. I had to balance the acidity by adding one teaspoon of sugar. Just before serving I rounded the sauce with a piece of butter. I served them with grilled potatoes and parboiled broccoli.
Quails in red-current sauce
Was it a good dish, yes definitely, but it is probably difficult to have a disaster with quails. My younger one refused to eat a little bird, she asked to check the image online, no way she was going to eat it (she tried on her own will) !
A few autumn colour desserts…
A chocolate mousse is a crowd pleaser, always! It takes ten minutes to prepare, it needs to be done a few hours ahead of the meal (4 minimum, 6 or more is best). It contains only eggs and cooking chocolate: no sugar, no cream. As my children would say :”got it?”….the recipe is HERE.
Chocolate mousse
This other dessert is for all seasons really but the colours work so well with autumn! This lemon and lime tart is a recipe from Julie Goodwin, an early contestant and winner of the Australian Masterchef. The recipe is available on Julie’s website or on my blog HERE. The edges of my crust got a bit hot (but not burnt). I would advise the blind cooking by picking holes with a fork instead of using blind baking stones may be the solution to avoid the issue.
Chestnut season is here! Most of you are likely to have memories of hot chestnuts booked on a cold days in the ashes of the fireplace. It brings you back to your childhood, doesn’t it?
Parisians may argue, you can get a cone of roasted warm chestnuts in winter at street corners for a couple Euros. I remember that from my student years, although the currency was not yet the Euro!
Today, most of us don’t have a fireplace, but you can still eat those chestnuts! Use a sharp knife to incise slightly through the skin if the chestnut (this is to prevent them having a little tantrum while cooking). Be careful not to cut yourself. Place the chestnuts on a baking sheet, little tin and in a hot oven for about 10 minutes. Insert a pointy knife in one of them to check for doneness. Peel the exterior and interior skins and enjoy!
What else can you use chestnuts for? Here are a few ideas:
Add on the sides of a lamb roast or roasted chicken. You will need to incise them as explained above, parboil them for a couple minutes and peel them. The boiling will help removing the skins. Make sure there is some juice in your roasting pan or they will become dry.
Make chestnut puree (water based or milk based). As above incise, boil a couple minutes then remove the skins. Then cook in either water or a mix of water and milk on low heat until crumbly and coked through. Puree. Add sugar if you wish (it depends what you want to do with the puree). Keep in the fridge or freezer. There are a number of recipes with chestnut puree, here is mine for a chestnut pudding. It is light and very delicate, beautiful!
Sydney bakeries part 2 (of 2 for now) is ready for you! Last week, I posted on recipes tried from Bourke St Bakery, essentially from one of their book. This week, it is about another bakery I have discovered at the Orange Grove Market . I am speaking about Flour and Stone. What I like about this bakery is the home feeling, the products look beautiful and somehow rustic at the same time. The other reason I like them, is that I have been making some of the same products at home, same same!
The recipes I am providing are mine. I have not consulted the Flour and Stone’s recipes (yet), only googled quickly to check if some were online. If you are after some of their recipes, there are a few on the web (google Flour and Stone or Nadine Ingram).
The recipe I am not giving, I would have to work it out to do so, is the one for this yummy lemon curd doughnut pictured above. Really nice!
Tarte fine aux pommes (apple tarte fine)
This is a traditional French tarte, most often found in bakeries. The tarte consists of puff pastry, apples, butter and sugar. My full recipe is HERE.
The next recipe is a bit of a mouthful, hang on:
Raspberry and buttermilk flourless chocolate cake
The name says it all, it is a moist chocolate cake (addictive actually!), it uses buttermilk and almond meals and with the raspberries, it is simply irresistible!
You can make it as a large cake or in individual portions (which is great to!). I made that cake up (and wrote the proportions down) about 8 years ago! I remember because it became the favourite after diner snack of a Swedish flatmate at the time, when she left, she specifically asked for the recipe (which I gave her). The recipe is HERE.
Am I the only one being tempted by a good bakery? I don’t think so. Here are a few words and recipes from a few tempting Sydney bakeries.
Today’s post is going to be challenging, first because of computer issues (mine is at the computer doctor) and also because I am missing a few photos because i could not complete a recipe… Not a complete disaster but well….I ran out of eggs ! I was making the first stage of a brioche dough which I will use to make small brioches for school (and me at work :-)) lunchboxes, when I realised the egg-situation. I was short of one egg! How could that be possible? There were two boxes of eggs in the fridge, but, as i found out, almost empty ones. No blame there on households habits! I should have known better, it is towards the end of the week.
I manage for my brioche dough, being one egg short but using some egg-wash from yesterday as a complement, however I did not get to prepare my gluten free raspberry chocolate fondant! You will understand the link in a moment.
Some bakeries I like in Sydney…
What do I like in a bakery? First I would have to like the products, maybe not all, but enough to come back (except if really outpriced!). Second, it is about the people and how the bakery comes through on the social plan.
Do you know that on weekends, you can make great bakeries discoveries when you wonder to some markets like the Paddington market, the Orange Grove market, the Carriage Works market, Pyrmont market (which I have never been to) and so on.
There are quite a number of good bakeries these days: Iggys, Bourke St bakery, Brickfield, Labancz, Grumpy baker, Zumbo, Bondi Organic Republic (thought I have not been there for ages, this is their new name), and plenty more. Let’s chat about Bourke St Bakery, Flour and Stone, and Brickfield Bakery.
Bourke St Bakery
Bourke St Bakery opened quite a while ago, initially in Surry Hills, they quickly became a reference bakery. The products are very good as you will first experience by the size of the queue, then directly trying not to buy too much! There are now a number of other shops, often easier to get to. Their bread is really good!
Bourke St Bakery, Surry Hills
Apart from their amazing bread, Bourke St bakery does a lot of small cakes and viennoiseries. They have a book on pretty much most of their products called “The ultimate baking companion”. I borrowed the book recently at our local library and have been trying a few recipes. I still have not returned the book, I would like to try some of the shortcrust pastries! I found that for a novice to bread making (I am not one of them) the bread recipes are a bit too technical or skipping a few explanation which would be very useful. For the other recipes, the recipes are great, beware of the quantities, they are designed for large volumes! Also beware that they use fresh yeast and not dry yeast. I did get caught on one recipe, I was furious with myself!
Tip: Rule of thumb: Dry yeast x 3 (in grams) = fresh yeast in grams
I tried a bread from that book, it was nice, oups, no photos. Otherwise, from that book:
The Dark Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins (CLICK CLICK FOR RECIPE). They are truly delicious, I highly recommend you do them. They please adults and children!
The chocolate prune brownie (CLICK CLICK !!!). I love the use of the soaked prune in that brownie, but it is very strong in chocolate (too much) and way too sweet for me. That said, I brought it to work, left it on the bench with a little note in the office shared kitchen and I could hear people coming back from the kitchen and their comments of appreciation (most had not even read to the bottom of the very short note to check who baked them!). Of course, there was no left overs. I also recommend respecting the cooking time, if the top seem stable, the bottom may be too gooey, decrease the oven and keep baking! I had to put mine straight back in the oven (the photo was taken when i first got it out).
The croissants and pains au chocolat. They were extra! Since we cannot eat 24 croissants and 24 pains au chocolat upfront, I froze the croissants and pains au chocolat just after making them (uncooked, before the last rising). I take them out the evening before breakfast, egg-wash them and let them on the kitchen bench on the tray i will bake them in, i cover them with a large humidified plastic box and bake in the morning. In terms of aesthetics, it does the trick, but i find they do not taste as good as when not frozen. I am not placing the recipe here, if you want it, contact me.
The rest very soon! I need to do my raspberry chocolate cake before speaking of Flour and Stone and it is getting late for today.
I have given this title “my so called Portuguese custard tarts” to today’s blog because I made my first batch of those tarts one afternoon a couple month ago with some left over puff pastry and left over crème patissiere which I was using for another dessert. I did not want to throw away puff pastry trimmings, no no no! I quickly got out of the drawer my muffin trays, chucked in the pieces of pastry roughly, I did not even bother soldering them together when sometimes 2 were necessary for one hol. Then I grabbed the plastic container with left over crème patissiere from the fridge, filled the holes with that, egg washed/milk washed the edges and zoum! Direction, the oven.
Result: yum, yum yum!
Since, I made them again, they are truly so delicious! I have perfected a bit my technique by adding rough raw sugar over the egg washed rim of the tartlets, it makes it a bit caramelized. My recipe is here. You can access it anytime from the main recipe menu of my blog.
Not just delicious, they are very easy and quick to make, once you have the crème patissiere ready and puff pastry ready.
Of course you could buy good quality puff pastry and good quality custard and make them in the moment, but sourcing these products in Australia will take you about as much time as doing it yourself! Do you know that supermarket puff pastry in Australia is not made out of butter but margarine? Well, check the back of the packet, basically, it is oil! The alternative is to buy the “Careme” brand out of selected stores. In Europe, you probably do not have that problem, I remember reading in some cooking blogs that Picard has a good product (but frozen) and there is at least another brand which was well regarded.
Anyway, once you have tried, you will not go back to the oil based version.
When I learned they were so popular that some shops only make and sell those tartlets, I read a few recipes. I had no idea they were a Portuguese specialty called “pasteis de nata”. What I don’t do is roll the puff pastry in a roll, let it cool overnight and cut discs the next day which are then flattened and used as basis. Check “Not quite Nigella“, she explains the concept very well. This means that the layering of the of pastry is now perpendicular to the cut and the visual effect is nicer.
Making puff pastry
Making puff pastry is not that hard, best is to do a big batch and freeze in portions. Look at the photo below, it is a cross section of a freshly made batch, you can see all of the folds!
I find it fun. Enclosing the butter is not hard and so far, for me, it has never burst out! I am giving the recipe and plenty image on a separate page here. Well, if the link does not work immediately, be patient, I am being boosted out of this laptop (my work laptop) by a schedule software update, a countdown has started on my screen! My personal laptop suddenly stopped working yesterday, I can’t get it to start. luckily we managed to access the hard drive and copy its content.
Coming up next week
A few bakery / cake shop discoveries in Sydney!! Plus some of their recipes tried for you (one is just cooling down on the kitchen bench).
raspberry choc chip muffin, recipe from Bourke St Bakery book
