Portuguese cuisine.
Recipe for cake with custard cream
Pastel de Belém
and Pastel de nata (Pastel de nata)

I'll start with the most famous culinary attraction of Portugal - the Pastel de Belém cake (Pastel de Belém), the Portuguese pronounce it almost like Bylen, the plural is pasteis (pasteish). This cake is filled with cream custard and is delicious. This cake is loved not only by the Portuguese themselves; it is a great success in other countries.

The history of the Pastel de Belem is very interesting. In past centuries in Portugal, many monasteries had fairly strong culinary traditions, and monastery sweets are still held in high esteem by the Portuguese. The monks kept the recipes for making their sweets secret, i.e. were "monopolists". So, they say that the monks of the Jerónimos monastery (Jerónimos or as it is sometimes translated into Russian - Jeronimov), began to sell these cakes in order to support their monastery and for this purpose opened a pastry shop next to the monastery in 1837 in the city of Belém (Belen), it is now a district of Lisbon. This pastry shop, or pastelaria in Portuguese, still exists in the same building, in the same place, and is called Pasteis de Belém.

At that time, Belem and Lisbon were remote cities and were connected by steamship. The Jeronimos Monastery and the Belém Tower (Torre de Belém) have always been attractive to tourists, who, in turn, appreciated not only the sights, but also the excellent taste of the cake.

From the very beginning, the secret of making the cake was hidden behind seven seals. Now only three people know this secret recipe: two owners of this confectionery and the pastry chef. Each initiate swears non-disclosure of this secret.

To this day, these cakes are made by hand and you can see this with your own eyes. In the pastry shop, part of the kitchen is fenced off with a huge glass, from where any visitor can watch the process.

Let's finally try this cake. Stop! Do you know how to eat it correctly? It means this: there should be two cakes per person, then they are sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon and only then eaten. Advice: when you take a bite, breathe carefully, otherwise you may get stained with powdered sugar.

Pastel de nata

Today, any pastry shop or cafe in Portugal offers to try Pastel de nata (Pastel de nata) - this is an analogue of Pastel de Belem, only without the “secret”. This delicious cake is often offered with coffee at a very attractive price. An original cake costs about 1 euro, a regular cake in a cafe can cost from 0.80 to 1.5 euros, depending…

It’s fun to make this cake yourself! Portuguese cuisine is famous for its sweets and the sweets here are quite sweet, forgive the tautology. To my surprise, there are few fruit pies in Portuguese cuisine. If it's fruit, it's mostly apples and oranges. Eggs are used a lot...

Pastel de nata )

Ingredients:

600 g ready-made puff pastry
500 ml. milk
lemon peel
cinnamon stick
60 g flour
500 g sugar
250 ml. Water
7 yolks

Preparation

Roll out the dough a little with a rolling pin and roll it into a roll. Then cut the dough into pieces about 1.5 cm thick. Place the pieces in muffin tins, greased with butter. Using both thumbs, spread the dough over the entire pan, turning in one direction so that the thickness of the dough on the bottom is less than on the sides. Place the molds on a baking sheet.

Advice! It is very convenient to use disposable muffin tins made of thick foil, which are sold in the store.

http://annaportugal.ru/recept-pastel-de-nata

A few more recipes for making the famous Portuguese sweet from different authors:

Portuguese pastry "Pastel de Belem"

NECESSARY:

400 g puff pastry (frozen)
2.5 cups heavy cream (35%)
9 yolks
9 tbsp. l. Sahara
Ground cinnamon
Powdered sugar

HOW TO COOK:

1. Defrost puff pastry. Roll out lightly and roll tightly along the long side. Cut into pieces 2 cm thick.

2. Grease muffin tins with vegetable oil or butter. Take a piece of dough so that the spiral is at the bottom of the mold and spread it along the walls with your fingers.

3. Place in the refrigerator while the cream is prepared.

4. Preheat the oven to 250°C.

5. Using a mixer, beat the yolks with sugar and cream until creamy. Place the saucepan with the mixture in a water bath and cook over low heat, stirring all the time, until the mixture resembles a thick custard.

6. Remove the molds with dough from the refrigerator and add 1 tbsp. l. cream into each mold.

7 . Bake for 20 minutes or until the sides are browned. If you pierce the center of the cream with a wooden toothpick, it should be dry.

8. Cool the tartlets for 5 minutes, remove from the tins and sprinkle with ground cinnamon and powdered sugar if desired.

BY THE WAY: You need to eat the cakes warm, and reheat them in the microwave or oven the next day.

Note:
From the comments to the recipe:
You forgot to mention that puff pastry can only be rolled in one direction. Otherwise, the dough ceases to be puffy and is baked completely differently than it should. And the recipe is wonderful, thank you!

http://www.domashniy.ru/frticle/eda/

Portuguese custard tarts

For 12 pcs. you will need:

225 g prepared puff pastry
175 ml prepared custard
2 tbsp. l. powdered sugar

Preparation:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees C. Roll out the dough and cut out 12 circles with a diameter of 14 cm. Place them in a mold with 12 indentations.

2. Place parchment paper on each circle and fill them with dry beans or uncooked rice (to prevent the dough from rising).

3. Bake the cakes for 10-15 minutes, or until the dough is cooked through. Remove the paper and dry beans/rice and let cool.

4. Fill the tarts with custard and sprinkle with powdered sugar. Place the brownies under the grill and cook until the sugar caramelizes. Remove from heat and let cool.

Portuguese pastry "Pastel de Belem"

The most delicious cake I have tried in recent months is Portuguese "Pastel de Belem" in the patisserie of the same name in Lisbon. The recipe for this sweet miracle, compiled, according to legend, by the monks of the Jeronimos Monastery, is a closely guarded secret, so any attempt to prepare Pastel de Belem at home, at first glance, is doomed to failure.

On the other hand, in any coffee shop in Lisbon, and even on the resort island of Madeira, a thousand kilometers from the Portuguese capital, you can see Pastel de Belem on the menu, which were clearly made in some other establishment than the one that gave the cake its name. The taste of these surrogate products ranges from unremarkable to very appetizing.

In general, I can say that the recipe Pastel de Nata(another name Pastel de Belem) did not disappoint me. This is still quite far from the feeling of delight that acquaintance with the authentic invention of the Portuguese monks evokes, but it is very, very good.

RECIPE FOR PORTUGUESE CAKES “PASTEL DE BELEM”
from the culinary blog “All the Salt”

NECESSARY:

400 g puff pastry (frozen)
2.5 cups heavy cream (35%)
9 yolks
9 tbsp. l. Sahara
Ground cinnamon
Powdered sugar

HOW TO COOK:

1. Defrost puff pastry. Roll out lightly and roll tightly along the long side. Cut into pieces 2 cm thick.

Roll the dough tightly into a tube

2. Grease muffin tins with vegetable oil or butter. Take a piece of dough so that the spiral is at the bottom of the mold and spread it along the walls with your fingers.

Divide the dough among the molds

3. Place in the refrigerator while the cream is prepared.

4. Preheat the oven to 250°C.

5. Using a mixer, beat the yolks with sugar and cream until creamy. Place the saucepan with the mixture in a water bath and cook over low heat, stirring all the time, until the mixture resembles a thick custard.

Preparing the cream

6. Remove the molds with dough from the refrigerator and add 1 tbsp. l. cream into each mold.

When I started looking on the Internet for something interesting about these cakes, it turned out that the correct recipe is known to approximately three people in the world, who still work in the same pastry shop “Pastéis de Belém”, where these cakes were baked for the first time. cakes in 1837. The recipe was given to a local pastry chef by a monk, and it turned out to be so successful that these cakes are now the most famous sweet in Portugal.
The base is a quick puff pastry dough, the filling is a very sweet (with double the amount of sugar) custard. Delicious and simple, especially if you have already mastered custard.

For the dough, prepare 100 grams of cold butter and sift 200 grams of flour, sprinkling it with a pinch of salt.

Chop the dough with a special chopper or two knives until crumbs are obtained.

Make a well, add 5 tablespoons of ice water and quickly knead the dough.

That's it. It's easy to work with while it's soft, but you have to do it quickly.

Roll up a rope, cut off pieces and roll out with a rolling pin in a circle.

Place the mugs in the molds (no need to grease or sprinkle), line the walls and put them in the refrigerator for half an hour.

Now the custard. Mix four yolks with 50 grams of powdered sugar.

And a tablespoon (40 grams) of flour.

Heat 350 ml of cream (20 to 35%) with 75 grams of granulated sugar and the core of a vanilla bean to a boil.
Pour the cream over the yolks, stirring vigorously.

Pour into a saucepan and cook over low heat until thickened. Place the cream in the molds with the dough, filling them two-thirds full.

Bake at 250C or higher for about 15-20 minutes.

Sprinkle the finished cakes with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

You can eat it, it tastes better when it cools down.

If you've been to Lisbon, you probably haven't missed the local delicacy - pastéis de nata. These small cakes with custard - vanilla custard - are known all over the world, but the most delicious ones are still prepared in their homeland - in Portugal.
We will also prepare puff pastries with vanilla cream, maybe not according to the traditional Portuguese recipe passed down from generation to generation, but still incredibly similar to the Lisbon Belem cakes, considered the most delicious of all pastéis de nata. So light and crispy on the outside, with a caramelized crust and the most delicate vanilla cream inside, simply delicious:)

Ingredients

• 1 glass of milk,
• 3 tablespoons cornstarch,
• 1/2 vanilla pod
• 1 cup white sugar
• 6 egg yolks,
• 500 g regular puff pastry.

Recipe for making cakes

1. Preheat the oven to 250 degrees C.
2. Lightly grease 12 baking pans.
3. Prepare the custard filling. In a saucepan, combine milk, cornstarch, sugar and vanilla. Heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens.
4. In a separate bowl, beat the yolks.
5. Slowly add 1/2 cup of the hot milk mixture to the yolks and stir.
6. Now gradually add the egg yolk mixture back into the remaining milk mixture, whisking constantly.
7. Heat, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes, or until thickened. Remove the vanilla pod.
8. Cut the chilled puff pastry into circles and spread into the pan in a layer approximately 3 mm thick. In general, the Portuguese first make a sausage from puff pastry (they roll out a layer of dough and roll it into a sausage roll), cut it crosswise like a roll, and then spread these rolls manually into molds. Any method is acceptable, even if you cut the dough into squares and put them in molds, the main thing is to do it quickly so that the butter between the layers of dough does not melt.
9. Fill the dough with custard filling and bake in the preheated oven for 17 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the filling is lightly browned on top.

The cakes are ready. Serve warm. Bon appetit!

These Portuguese pastries are called pasteis de nata or pasteis de belem, as they were originally only available in one pastry shop in Belem. They are made from custard and puff pastry. But the dough is made with slight differences from the usual puff pastry and the custard is also different in technology. If you don’t know how to do it, you can take a regular patissiere or custard and a piece of ready-made puff pastry. In the case of cream, it may even be better, but the dough, after all, is better to make at home (if you use normal butter and not cheap margarine). But I wanted authenticity, and I followed a Portuguese recipe. Although, supposedly, even they do not know the correct recipe for pasta, because its original recipe is kept secret.
Regarding technology, the cakes are baked at the highest possible temperature. If you have the opportunity to bet 300*, bet. I have 250* maximum. The oven should be very hot. Yes, and the molds must be special. I don’t have these, I took small cocotte bowls with a volume of 60 ml, these proportions will make 24 pieces.
Possible additives - cocoa, coffee, vanilla... sometimes the cakes are even topped with caramel

Dough (or 600 g ready-made puff pastry)
250 g flour
a pinch of salt
140 ml water
180 g softened butter

Cream:
300 ml. milk
3 tbsp. flour
180 g sugar
80 ml. water
6 yolks
cinnamon stick
A piece of zest about 5 cm, without white skin

1. The dough can be kneaded in a food processor by combining all the ingredients together and kneading for about 1-2 minutes. Or knead by hand for at least 7 minutes. Leave the dough under the film at room temperature for 30 minutes.
2. Roll out the dough on a generously floured table into a thin rectangle with a large side of about 50 cm. Brush off any remaining flour with a brush. Optionally divide the dough into three parts. Lubricate the left and central parts with softened butter. Fold the right side over the center side and brush off any remaining flour from the dough. Fold the left side of the dough onto it. Turn the dough so that the rectangle becomes horizontal and roll the dough into a thin rectangular layer.
3. Do the second point one or two more times. Finally, grease the entire area of ​​the dough with oil and carefully roll it into a roll, starting from the larger side. Cut the dough into 3-4 pieces and wrap in film and leave in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
4. Prepare the cream: boil the syrup - add sugar to water, add zest and cinnamon, bring to a boil and simmer slightly over high heat (just until the bubbles become large, we are not talking about any caramel) if anyone has thermometer for syrup - it should be about 100*C
5. Combine flour and 1/4 milk, stir thoroughly so that there are no lumps. Bring the remaining milk to a boil, then pour the flour mixture into it in a thin stream, stirring occasionally. Cook, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens to softened butter. Those. quite thick. Stir in the warm syrup little by little and strain. Stir in lightly beaten yolks.
6. Cut the dough into pieces slightly thicker than your thumb. Place pieces of dough into the molds and spread it over the mold, pressing the dough with your thumbs, starting from the middle and ending towards the edge of the mold.
7. Pour the cream into the watering can, squeezing the neck from below with one finger. Pour the cream into the molds, removing your finger from the hole near the watering can (this is a very convenient way to pour the cream, but if you want, you can try without a watering can). Forms must be filled out 2/3 full.
8. Preheat the oven to 250 * if you have a grill, it is better to use it. Bake for about 10-12 minutes. The cream should not rise much. If it starts to grow, immediately remove the cakes from the oven. Cool the cakes slightly in the pans, then remove, sprinkle with powdered sugar and cinnamon and serve. With cocoa or coffee with milk.

This is how I filled out the forms