Portuguese egg tart - my old own version

The egg tart is probably the signature piece of the Portuguese people. Even on this side of the world, it´s very popular, although considerably different from the tarts we have in Portugal. At least the egg tarts I´ve tried here in Singapore are more quiche-like to me, but I´ve heard that the ones in Macau are very similar to the Portuguese tarts, which I believe to be true since Macau was a Portuguese colony for over 400 years, until 1999. Macau is definitely in my traveling list!

I have a recipe that I learned when I was 15 and I´ve kept it with me for all these years. I knew it would come in handy to surprise my non-Portuguese friends some day :) The basic different between my egg tart and the real one is that I don´t use puff pastry. I  would either have to made it myself - which is quite challenging - or buy it, so a prefer to make the pastry that came with the recipe. I also use a larger mold instead of several smaller ones. 

Needless to say that I have already made this recipe a few times and yesterday was one of the occasions, as I was having a couple friend of ours over for an afternoon snack.

Trust me, this recipe is very easy to make and puts a smile on any face! So please take note:

For the pastry you need:
- 150 grams of flour
- 60 grams of sugar
- 75 grams of melted butter
- 1 egg

Mix all the ingredients and line the mold with it, letting it cool down in the fridge for about 15 minutes. In the meantime, prepare the filling.

And for that you need:

- 1/2 L of milk
- 7 table spoons of sugar
- 2 peels of lemon (makes all the difference to use the peels!)
- 4 egg yalks
- 2 table spoons of corn flour (Maizena flour)

In a pan, mix the milk, the sugar, the eggs and the lemon, put on the stove and let it heat up.
Then dissolve the corn flour in a little bit of cold milk and add it to the mix in the pan. Keep stirring until the filling becomes creamy and ticker.

Remove the pastry from the fridge and pour the filling in. Let it cook in the oven for about 40 minutes at 180º, until the filling gets some dark/burned spots. As you can see in my photo, I didn´t get that result, with my new oven I never do actually... I have tried all the programs possible but for some weird reason I never get the finishing I would like to have. Anyways, for your reference, look at the image on the top part of the blog.

The egg tart is delicious, creamy, very light and always a hit! How can you not love it?

Happy Monday everyone!