Pastel de Nata: The Pastry of a Nation

Pastel de Nata… the most ionic and delicious pastry in Portugal.

Pastel de Nata is similar to a Chinese egg tart. It is a tart filled with a creamy custard filling. I will go into more detail on how it’s made in later but lets talk about it’s history.

This is a very quick summary I was given in our cooking class.

Like lots of European countries, the monarchy and the church has “equal” power. I do not remember what century this happened but the French were invading Portugal and were decapitating other Monarchies so the King, Queen, and one of their son’s fled to the colonies in Brazil. However, one of the sons stayed in Portugal and decided he was going to separate and the Church and the state. I am not sure why but this meant and the Priests, nuns, and monks had to leave the church and were homeless.

Before the monks and nuns were homeless, for hundreds of years, since they were not allowed to leave the monasteries, they would spend a lot of their free time baking. So for centuries, they developed many recipes that the Portuguese have never tasted.

When all the clergy was homeless, they decided to bake and sell some of the pastries they made in the monasteries. One of these pastries was the famous tarts that this blog is about.

However, these tarts were originally called Pastel de Belem (Belem was the place they were originally sold). These tarts were so popular that they attracted the attention of a wealthy business man who bough the recipe and trade marked the name “Pastel de Belem” so not one else in Portugal was able to sell Pastel de Belem.

Graham and I went to Belem and went to the the bakery called Pastel de Belem and the tarts were very good. They had a very efficient system, the tarts were warm, and they came with cinnamon and icing sugar.

However, the people of Portugal were very upset that only one bakery could sell the Pastel de Belem so the people of Portugal decided to change the name to pastel de nata which means “cream tart” so the rest of Portugal could enjoy the tarts.

So how are they made? The steps are simple but there are a lot of them.

The first part is making the puff pastry. Flour, water, salt and a lot of butter. Very similar to croissants. Once you make the dough, you get cold butter and laminate it between the layers of dough. You have to be fast so the butter doesn’t melt. We didn’t make the perfect puff pastry but this recipe is forgiving so it doesn’t need to be perfect.

Then you make the filling. The first step is making a simple syrup that is infused with cinnamon and lemon peel. You put sugar then water into a pot and put it on medium heat. Do no mix the water and sugar. This is very important to ensure the sugar is always covered by the water do it doesn’t crystalize. Once it reaches a rolling boil, let it boil for 30 seconds and then take it off the heat.

The sugar mixture get put to the side and then we need to make a thick milk mixture. This mixture was flour, corn starch, and milk. You mix all the ingredients in a pot and slowly heat it and mix it continuously until it thickens. Then, take it off the heat and mix in some egg yolks. The eggs didn’t scramble, we did a good job. Once everything is incorporated, we slowly add the sugar liquid while mixing vigorously.

Once everything is mixed, we have our filling.

Now the assembly. Take the puff pastry and roll it into a log. Then cut the log into 1/2″ pieces. Then, we take the tart tin and put the little roll up wards into the tin and then press down on it and spread the pastry around the tin. This is much easier to explain with a demonstration.

Anyways, once you made the shells, then you pour the filling into the shells and bake it. Make sure you do not over fill the tarts because they do expand.

Once they come out of the oven, you eat them and burn your mouth because you don’t have any patience to wait until they cool.

In the middle picture above, you can see a swirl on the bottom of the pastry which comes from the technique we used to shape the shell.

Pastel de Nata are incredibly delicious and I can’t wait to make them for everyone when we get home.

Thank you for Portcookingclass for having us, Joana was a wonderful host.