Portuguese Custard Tarts (cheats version)

Last week's Bake Off brought us savoury pies, pastel de nata and hand raised pies. I considered making savoury pies or a hand raised pie (like these hand raised pork pies I made during Bake Off 4 years ago), but time ran away with me at the end of last week, and I was out on Saturday. Instead I opted for my own version of the Portuguese custard tart, which was easier and less time consuming than the recipe the bakers used during the technical challenge. I've neither eaten or made these before, despite holidaying in Portugal many times. I've never really been a fan of egg custard tarts, as I've always found them to be a bit, well, eggy, and I guess I thought these would be much the same.

Instead of making rough puff pastry, or using shop bought puff pastry, I made my own cream cheese pastry, which is my pastry of choice now when I make pies and pasties as it's so easy to work with, and it tastes so good. It's not quite as flaky as puff, but a lot lighter than shortcrust, so it worked really well in these tarts, resulting in a light & crisp casing for the non eggy custard.

I cheated a little when it came to the custard filling, mainly because I wanted to see if a cheap 25p tin of custard would actually work as a filling, and believe me it did work, and these dozen tarts didn't last more than a couple of hours! The custard was soft, and not at all rubbery or eggy, and by using shallow bun tin (the kind we all used to bake fairy cakes before American muffins and fancy cupcakes became a thing) there was just the right amount of custard for the quantity of pastry. If I was making them again I would probably leave them in the oven for a few more minutes or roll the pastry a little thinner.

If you wanted to make these tarts even more quickly, and with even less effort you could use ready rolled puff pastry - one sheet of puff pastry would probably make 18 or 24 small tarts like mine, or 12 if you wanted to use larger muffin pan moulds. Baking at home doesn't have to be tricky or time consuming, and with a few little 'cheats' you can make your home baked goodies look as though you've been slaving away for hours on them!

A little bit of a swirl visible on the underside of the tarts - I wonder if it would've been enough for Mr H & Prue!

Caramel Stroopwafels

Tuesday night tv is a bit of a treat at the moment isn't it, starting off with Bake Off, followed by Dr Foster. This week was even more of a treat for me as the husband was away so I had the remote control to myself, with no risk of popping out to make a cuppa during an ad break and coming back to football, or any other random sport, on the screen.

What a night bake off was, starting off with some delicious caramel shortbreads, followed by a few grainy stroopwafels in the middle, and ending up with some epic (and one not so epic) caramel cakes.

A few days ago I thought about attempting to make waffle wafers or cones this week in my waffle maker, so when I saw the stroopwafels on Bake Off I knew that I had to make them, it was fate. I must admit that I was a bit hesitant after watching all the bakers fail with their caramel fillings, with not one of them having the right consistency, although the making of the actual biscuit didn't look too complicated. I've eaten stroopwafels a few times as they seem to be readily available in coffee shops, as well as supermarkets and trendy Scandinavian shops. The way to enjoy them is to pop one on top of your warm coffee to soften the caramel, and allow the caramel and cinnamon flavours to come out.

As the dough has yeast in I was kind of expecting it to be like bread dough, but it was more like a cookie dough - whether that was right or not I don't know, but it worked. My waffle maker is only a cheap one bought from Lidl a few months ago, and for the stroopwafels to be as thin as they should be the waffle maker really needs to be shallower, which meant mine were a little on the chunky side.

Apart from burning my fingertips slicing the stroopwafels open, the whole process was pretty painless, relatively quick, and a lot less messy than I'd anticipated. I decided to make the caramel in the microwave to avoid burning a pan, which seemed to work really well and resulted in a lovely smooth caramel. The recipe I used called for treacle, but as I didn't have any, following a recent store cupboard clear out, I instead used maple flavour golden syrup.

Apart from looking a little rustic, I was extremely pleased with how these turned out. They had just the right amount of crispness, and the caramel was just the right amount of sticky. I know I should've cut a perfect round with a cutter, but I decided not to as the shape wasn't too far off round anyway.

If I was to see these in a coffee shop wrapped in cellophane and tied up with string, I would definitely be tempted to buy some, and I'll definitely be making these again, especially the 'wafel' part, which would be great served with ice cream.