Portuguese custard tarts

1. STEP 1
2. Roll the pastry
3. Mix the flour and icing sugar, and use this to dust the work surface. Roll the pastry out to make a 45 x 30cm rectangle. Roll up lengthways to create a long sausage shape.
4. STEP 2
5. Cutting pastry into rounds
6. Cut the pastry into 24 wheels, about 1-2cm thick.
7. STEP 3
8. Roll out each pastry portion
9. Roll each wheel lightly with the rolling pin to fit 2 x 12-hole non-stick fairy cake tins.
10. STEP 4
11. Press pastry into the tin
12. Press the pastry circles into the tins and mould into the tins to make thin cases. Chill until needed.
13. STEP 5
14. Make the infused syrup
15. Heat the oven to 220C/fan 200C/gas 7. Make a sugar syrup by bringing the sugar, 200ml water, lemon zest and cinnamon stick to the boil. Reduce until syrupy, allow to cool, then remove the cinnamon and lemon. Whisk the eggs, egg yolks and cornflour until smooth in another large pan.
16. STEP 6
17. Making custard
18. Heat the milk and vanilla pod seeds in a separate pan until just below the boil. Gradually pour the hot milk over the eggs and cornflour, then cook on a low heat, continually whisking.
19. STEP 7
20. Add syrup to custard
21. Add the cooled sugar syrup to the custard and whisk until thickened slightly.
22. STEP 8
23. Pour custard into the tins
24. Pour the custard through a sieve. Pour into the pastry cases and bake for 15 minutes until the pastry is golden and the custard has darkened.
    15 minutes
25. STEP 9
26. cool and dust with icing sugar
27. Cool completely in the tins then sift over icing sugar and ground cinnamon to serve.

Cooking notes

Baked goods are unforgiving with rounding — use weights rather than volumes whenever possible, and verify pan capacity if you scale up or down significantly.

For volume-to-weight conversions of any ingredient — flour, sugar, butter, salts — use the ingredient converter. To translate the recipe's oven temperature between °C, °F and gas mark, see the temperature converter.

When you scale this recipe up or down, remember that cooking time does not scale linearly. A doubled cake takes longer, but not twice as long; a doubled soup takes roughly twice as long. The cooking-time guide gives sensible starting estimates by dish geometry.