Pastéis de Nata

Ingredients

• 1 sheet of all-butter puff pastry
• 200 g caster sugar
• 120 ml water
• 1 cinnamon stick
• a strip of lemon peel
• 300 ml whole milk
• 40 g plain flour
• 6 egg yolks
• ground cinnamon, to serve

Method

1. Roll the pastry into a log

   Unroll the pastry, roll it back up tightly into a log, and cut into 12 discs. Sit each cut-side up in a muffin tin and press it out from the centre with your thumbs, up the sides. That spiral is what gives pastéis their shattering, layered shell — a flat-cut round will not do it.

2. Make a sugar syrup

   Boil the sugar, water, cinnamon stick and lemon peel to 100°C, or until it is a thin syrup, then leave to infuse off the heat. Never let it colour.

   5 min

3. Make a thick milk paste

   Whisk the flour into 100 ml of the cold milk, then stir into the rest of the milk warmed in a pan and cook, whisking, until very thick. Flour rather than cornflour, and thick rather than pourable — this is a custard built on a roux.

4. Combine hot into hot

   Strain the syrup into the hot milk paste in a thin stream, whisking constantly, then cool to lukewarm before beating in the yolks. Yolks into anything hotter than that will scramble.

5. Fill only three-quarters

   Strain the custard and fill the cases about three-quarters full. It rises and bubbles over if you fill them to the brim.

6. Bake as hot as your oven goes

   Bake at 250°C or higher for 12 to 14 minutes until the pastry is crisp and the tops are blistered and blackened in patches. Those burnt spots are correct and non-negotiable — a pale, evenly yellow pastel is an underbaked one. Dust with cinnamon and eat warm.

   14 min