Week 6- Pastéis de nata

We go to Portugal every year and every year I look forward to tucking into one of their pastéis de nata. They are creamy, puffy, Portuguese perfection and they far exceed our rather shoddy English custard tarts. So when I saw that these were the technical challenge for this week I was jumping for joy!

The Prep
Super easy, all the ingredients are very bog standard and would be found in any baker's cupboard. The only thing that slightly took me by surprise was the 7 egg yolks! So we will be having a lot of egg white omelettes as a consequence. And the amount of sugar, no wonder these little puffs of goodness taste so amazing, they are large sugar cubes disguised with eggs. Anyways, not that that is an issue, if you don't like sugar I don't think traditional baking would be for you.

The Bake
This was my first time making puff pastry, so I was going in blind. Paul Hollywood's instructions appear to be rather sparse at times, which shouldn't surprise anyone. However, I think my biggest tip would be to keep your kitchen cold (or put it in the fridge as much as you can!) It makes the pastry easier to work with.

Also this was the only bake where I was literally running around like a mad woman. I had flour all over me, temperature gauges beeping at me, meanwhile trying to separate seven egg yolks as fast as I could. I am not going to lie, I did love this. It felt very authentic and bake off worthy. And yes another milestone, first time I have ever used a temperature gauge while baking! Managed to avoid it during caramel week, but this week it was my time!

The Result
I think they went rather well! The only thing I was slightly concerned about was my oven seemed to give top heat only, so a few had very raw bottoms. But I just put them back in the oven with foil over which seemed to do the trick.

Faff: 7/10
Taste: 7/10
Appearance: 8/10