Portuguese Tarts

I have lived beside Monastery Bakery bakery my whole life. When I was little, it only took up one shop front, but since then it has expanded to about 5, and has even gone recent renovation to expand into the back. And it’s with good purpose, because it is definitely the best bakery I’ve ever stepped foot in.

My favourite thing from there (apart from the tiramisu, which I will leave to them or I’ll end up making my own birthday cake every year) are the Portuguese egg tarts. My mum grew up near Little Portugal in Toronto, so she likes them, my grandma likes them, and anyone we’ve forced to eat them has liked them. It’s a group love.

(I swear to you, they are the greatest. Make ‘em. Impress your homies.)

I’m going the lazy way with the crust today, sorry. It’s also 24 Hour Comics Day and I should really be doing that instead, but dammit, I want some tarts. Also, my papa is coming over today and I want to give some to him to take home. Aww. You can either do it this way, or get one of the Pilsbury pre-made crusts and just cut it up. Or you can make it all by scratch and show me up, do what you gotta do.

What you will need:

Crust
1 box pie crust mix (11oz)
3 tablespoons melted butter
1/3 cup cold water

Filling
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup of sugar
1/3 cup whipping cream
1/3 cup milk
3 drops vanilla extract

Crust
Dump the pie mix out of the little bag (I know it’s tough, but we’ll pull through together), and add in your 3 tablespoons of melted butter. I like how the butter tells you how much 3 tablespoons is right on it, because I could never figure that out on my own. I’m not good with measurements. Thanks, butter!

Stir that together until it’s doughy, and then add 1/3 cup of cold water. It’ll look sort of wet, but it will all come together, don’t worry. Action shot!

It’ll end up looking like this, which is good, because that’s what pie dough looks like. You can either roll it into 12 little balls now, or just set it aside and deal with it later. I chose the lazy route and just stuck it in the corner.

Filling

Separate 4 egg yolks into a bowl. Here’s a picture of egg yolks.

Cool. Now add 1/2 a cup off sugar, like so:

Then add 1/3 cup of whipping cream, 1/3 cup of milk, and 3 drops of vanilla extract. I don’t carry around an eye dropper for baking, so I just threw some in. I like vanilla, whatever.

Whisk it all together until it’s an even colour, and it’s nice and smooth. You’re going to have to strain it into another bowl, so go get a strainer. If you’re wondering why you’d need to, like I did, it’s because the sugar and the egg yolks make these nasty orange little boogery things, and you totally don’t want those in your tarts. That’s horrible.

After you strain it, it’ll look like this:

Put it all together!

Preheat your oven to 204°C (400°F). Butter a muffin pan so you can get your tarts out after you bake them. Always important!

Take your dough, either in little balls already or left in blob form, and press some into each muffin… dent. I don’t know. You want them to go up the sides as well, but try not to stretch them too thin, because then all the stuff will fall out the bottom. Oh no!

Then take your egg mixture and pour it into the pastry shells. I used a spoon, which you might want to do too. It’s easier, for sure. Fill them up about 3/4s of the way.

Put them in the oven and bake them for 15-20 minutes. I had a bit of time to kill, so I ate one of these awesome danishes from the aforementioned Monastery Bakery. Look at this badass:

Sweet.

When they’re done, take them out and set them aside to cool for a little bit. The pastry should be fluffy, and the egg mixture should be solid enough to not jiggle around a lot when you take them out. Like a custard! …since it’s custard. Shh.

And there you go! Delicious, delicious Portuguese Tarts.

Peach, Cherry, and Plum Jam Flowers

My first post here! How exciting. I have been baking and cooking a lot recently, so I thought I might as well set up a blog. So I did. It was pretty cool.

The first things I am going to post up here are Peach, Cherry, and Plum Jam Flower Cookies. The recipe itself is from the Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking cookbook. The original recipe calls for raspberry jam, however, and since I don’t care for raspberry, I’m using… er, 3 other kinds of jam. Sure.

What you will need:

1 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
3/4 cup confectioners’ (icing) sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 tablespoons of any seedless jam you fancy
2 cookie cutters (one smaller than the other, but the same shape!)
and 1 big bowl

I ended up mixing most of this with my hands, but I usually like to use my happy green whisk. Here is a picture of him, because he’s super excited about baking.

Woo and yay!

Anyway, first things first. I cut up my butter into pieces, because have you ever tried to mix a solid hunk of butter with anything? That business is hard. Or I’m just weak, either way. If you are going to make these, take the butter out of the fridge way before you do so, so it’s softer and easier to work with.

To your cup of butter, add 3/4 cup of icing sugar.

You can mix this together on medium speed if you have a blender, but for the poor blenderless few like myself, the book says to use a wooden spoon. …I don’t have a wooden spoon either, so I started out with Happy Whisk. It took a while, so I watched some Star Trek.

They’re worried Spock might be dead, because he appears to be on a planet of cavemen who throw foam bones. But it’s cool, he’s alright.

After a while of this I gave up, because I was getting nowhere. I ended up mixing it all together with my hands, which I then spent about 10 minutes washing because I hate getting butter on my hands. It is so gross, you guys. It looks like this, though; all smooth and blended. Add in 1 1/2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, and 1/2 teaspoon of almond extract. Which smells awesome, by the way.

Mix that all up until it is smooth – you can use your spoon/whisk/blender on low speed for that, since it’s softer now. Add in 2 cups of all-purpose flour, and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

You need to blend it until the dough comes together in large clumps. Just make sure all the flour is incorporated, and you’ll be good. When that’s done, smush it all together into one big lump-o-dough.

Delicious. Cut that in half, make each half into a ball, and then flatten that business out. Wrap it up in cling-film, and slap it in the fridge for about 40 minutes.

This will firm it up so it’s easier to work with when you’re making it into super cute little flowers.

After you’re done waiting, preheat the oven to 165°C (or 325°F), and line two rimless baking sheets with parchment paper. You could use those cool silicon baking mats as well, but parchment paper will make your cookies nice and crisp, so it’s probably better to do that. I used my blue one to roll the dough out on though, and that made life a whole lot easier. Work with one blob-o-dough at a time, so the other one stays firm while you’re rolling.

Take one out of the fridge, and dust a work surface and a rolling pin with some flour. Roll out the dough to 6mm (or 1/4 inch) thick, and then use your big cookie cutter to cut up some cookies, aw yeah.

Take half of those, and cut out the centre with your smaller cookie cutter. This will make a little hole in it, how cute!

Put the big flowers on one sheet, and the smaller ones on another. Then repeat with the other blob-o-dough. When you’re done with that one, smush all the extra bits together, and make some more out of that! Awesome, so many cookies.

Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, until they’re light brown. That’s about 12-15 minutes. Unfortunately, I suck at this, and they melted somehow. I don’t even know how this happens. But it’s okay!

Since they’re still soft when you take them out of the oven, if you manage to fail like I did, you can just cut them again. Don’t worry. If you’re making someone cookies and they complain that they’re not perfect, they’re a jerk anyway.

Then put about 1 teaspoon of jam in the middle of each full cookie, leaving a bit of a border around the edges. That way the jam wont come out the sides, because that would be gross. I’m using Greaves jam, because it is delicious. You can order them online here, and for reals? Totally worth it. We went all the way to Niagara-on-the-Lake for them.

And then you have delicious cookies. High fives all around, you guys. A job well done. You can keep them in an airtight container for about 4 days. I would suggest eating them though.