Chocolate custard tarts

 I keep wanting to improve on the egg custard tarts but I decided this time to attempt Paul Hollywood;s recipe for Chocolate custard tarts instead.

I took a rather lazy way to produce them.   I used frozen puff pastry which wasn't bad at all.   I had problems with the blind bake because I didn't have baking beans to weight down the pastry.  I only had lentils for the substitute of dried beans so they were only partially successful.  Lessons learned, lol.

I didn't have a vanilla bean pod so I used liquid vanilla extract.  That works well.  My custard turned out fine except for a bit of a brown tint from the extra cinnamon I added.  I can't help myself when it comes to the cinnamon.

Another cheat I did was to microwave the chocolate to melt it.  I have a small kitchen and it gets hot with all the heating oven and stove top custard making . . . so MICROWAVE!!   Once the melted chocolate had the heavy cream added, it seemed fine to me.  It was my first time making ganache so what do I know??  It tastes fine.

I put it all together and now I have some lopsided bumpy tarts which still taste good.

I used silicone cups instead of the muffin tin.  Maybe I could have used the smaller cups.

Portuguese Egg Tarts (Pasteis de Nata)

 If you watch that famous British baking show, then you might have seen Paul Hollywood's recipe for these egg custard tarts,   I love these tarts but my exposure to them  has been mainly in Hong Kong bakeries.  I did find them in a Chinese restaurant, Jeng Chi in Richardson,  not far from where I live in Dallas.  Then a Taiwanese bakery,  85C, opened up a branch near that restaurant and they have really good egg tarts.

But with the #StayHome, #StaySafe, I thought I would try to make my own.   A new goal of pastry flakiness filled with a yummy egg custard.

I think I will be going to the bakery after I feel comfortable to do it.  Not any time soon though. 

I tried twice . . . TWICE . . . checking more than one recipe and using different ways to bake.  One of my failures. sniff, sniff!

First attempt using the silicon tart pans . . . OK, but the custard didn't puff up like they should have. I think I was worried about the silicon cups sitting on the hot, hot, hot baking sheet.

Second attempt used the muffin/cupcake tin. The cupcake paper liners were the wrong thing to do (need smooth sides) and they just didn't puff either.

Maybe it was my fear of the hot, hot oven.   IDK

But wait!!!   I just spotted another recipe to try . . . or two!!  :-)

leitesculinaria.com recipes - published 12/12/20 after I finished my two tries.  It has a video so you can watch various tasks like forming the pastry in the cups!!!  This is a bigger bakery than a home bakery but interesting to watch.  Alas, I don't think I can use this recipe as it heats the oven to 550F . . .  too hot!!!  But well worth watching that video.

thewoksoflife.com-portuguese-custard-tarts-pasteis-de-nata/ - this one has more photos and some dough manipulating videos to help create the dough /fill the tart tins.  It uses an oven at 450F so more doable in my home kitchen.

Both recipes will be good to review for another attempt so I will keep these on the list . . . but not too high because I will be making more Italian bread.  Also, I might make a custard pie which should be good practice for the custard part.