Gourmet Inspiration Tip: Who doesn’t love a good coffee dessert and who doesn’t love Portuguese tarts? I thought about marrying these two passions of mine and creating some Portuguese coffee cakes.
I didn’t have a muffin tin so I went back to using the oven safe teacups, but they turned out amazingly well with the puff pastry, if you like that little bit of extra puff pastry.
Ingredients:
4 puff pastry circles of 10 cm.
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of water
3/4 cup milk
2 egg yolks
1 shot of espresso or strong coffee
2 tablespoons of cornmeal
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon brown sugar
Method:
Grease a muffin tin (or in my case, a teacup) and cover with puff pastry sheets to form 4 nice bowls. Refrigerator.
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. While the oven is heating, combine the sugar and water in a saucepan and stir slowly over low heat until the sugar dissolves and becomes syrupy. Remove from heat.
In a bowl, combine the cornmeal, milk, and egg yolks and mix until well combined. Add the sugar mixture and vanilla extract and mix well. Return the mixture to the stove and heat slowly until the mixture thickens to a nice custard consistency. Add the espresso and stir until well combined.
Remove the puff pastry shells and pour the custard mixture into the shells. Bake for 20-25 minutes until the dough begins to brown. Remove from the oven and allow the pastry cream to settle back into the bases.
Spread brown sugar on a piece of aluminum foil and dry in the oven for 1-2 minutes to remove moisture. Gently pound the tarts out of their pans, then sprinkle the tops with brown sugar. Place them under a hot grill or broiler, or use a torch, to quickly caramelize the tops. Attend.