Chocolate Custard Tarts

Custard tarts are the most famous Portuguese dessert and they became very popular wherever the Portuguese have set their feet on Earth. This is my dad's favorite and I can't stop thinking about him whenever I make or eat some custard tart. This time I made it quite different, I added some chopped chocolate to the regular vanilla custard and it became a family favorite, it was so good that I can't wait to make them again...




Chocolate Portuguese Custard Tart

4 large egg yolks
100 g sugar
2 tbsp of starch, I used tapioca starch but it can be potato or corn
200 ml cream
200 ml milk
1 tsp natural vanilla extract
80 grams of dark chocolate with at least 58% of cocoa solids
400 grams of homemade puff pastry

How:

Lightly butter 12 individual muffin pans and set aside.

In a medium large sauce using a fouet whisk egg yolks, sugar and starch until well blended. Add cream and keep whisking making sure there are not any lumps. Gradually add the milk and whisk until you get and homogeneous mixture.Transfer pan with cream-milk mixture to stove and cook over medium heat stirring until the mixture comes to the boil and thickens.
Remove from the heat and add chocolate piece and vanilla extract while whisking vigorously to make sure the hot custard melts the chocolate and the custard becomes completely chocolate

Transfer the custard to a bowl, cover the surface with plastic film to prevent a skim forming and leave to cool.








Preheat the oven to 190-200C.

Open the pastry to form a rectangle of 30X50Cm. Cut the pastry sheet in half, put one half on top of the other and roll up the pastry tightly from the short end and cut the pastry log into twelve 1 cm circles. Lay each circle of pastry on your work surface lightly floured and with a rolling pin to roll out to make a 10 cm diameter circle.
Press the pastry rounds into the buttered muffin tin and make sure you leave a border with at least 1cm hanging outside the tin as the pastry will shrink while baking.

Spoon the chocolate custard into the prepared muffin tarts but don't fill the tins more than 2/3 as the filling will rise during baking. Bake for 20-25 minutes, or until the pastry is fully cooked and golden. Let the tarts cool before removing them from the tins.

Makes 12