Portuguese Egg Custard Tarts Recipe – Homemade Portuguese Egg Tarts

Portuguese egg tarts are an absolute delight to bake and eat. My ex-manager, Joao, is Portuguese and from the day he came to know that I love baking, he’s been asking me to bake some Portuguese egg tarts. It sounded daunting but to be fair, I didn’t even do a search for Portuguese egg tarts before deciding that in my mind. As he continued telling me how delicious they are and couldn’t be more different from Chinese Egg Tarts, I said I would try baking the Portuguese version if he could bring some for me from Portugal. He agreed.

You may also like these spinach feta muffins, very easy to bake and super delicious!

And then he went and made it happen. A few months after this conversation, he actually brought some egg tarts from back home and I tried them. They were custardy, sweet, and true to his word, delicious.

I had no more excuses to not bake some Portuguese egg tarts and the best opportunity came up when a bunch of were going to visit Joao and Ruth’s baby, Luke.

Imagine baking Portuguese egg tarts for the first time for a Portuguese. Go ahead, imagine that. Jitterville!

I did it and I got a huge thumbs up from Joao. He even said a lot of people in Singapore would be willing to pay for these. Hmmm…

Portuguese Egg Custard Tarts
Adapted from Not Quite Nigella
Makes 12

Ingredients:
3 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar (I would use slightly lesser than this next time)
2 tbsp cornflour
400ml full cream milk
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 block of puff pastry sheet

How to Make Portuguese Egg Tarts

1. Grease a muffin tray and pre heat oven to 200C.

2. Place the egg yolks, sugar, and cornflour in a pan and whisk together until well combined. Slowly add in the milk and mix well with no lumps.

3. Place the pan over a medium heat and cook, stirring, until the mixture thickens and comes to the boil. Let it simmer for 2-3 mins, then remove from heat and add the vanilla extract.

4. Transfer the custard to a bowl, cover, and let it cool.

5. Thaw the puff pastry sheet and roll to about 1/2″ thickness on a floured surface. Roll it from the width-side tightly and cut into small discs. Roll each disc (flouring the surface sufficiently) to the rough size of the muffin tray.

6. Lay each rolled out disc into the muffin tray, pour the cooled custard to about 3/4 level and bake for about 25 mins.

The custard will bubble up during baking, don’t worry! The top of the egg tart should have brownish black patches for that authentic Portuguese egg tart look!

Sprinkle the egg tarts with cinnamon powder and serve warm.