My Family Milk Tart

It seems every nation has their own version of a custard tart - the Portuguese have pasteis de nata, the British have their vanilla custard tarts, Italians their 'torta di nonna' and our South African milk tart sort of falls somewhere in the middle with it's cinnamon topping. No matter what part of the world you're from, it seems we're all unanimously in love with the combination of a creamy egg custard and a crisp pastry base. 

With heritage in mind, I knew there was only one place to go for a proper milk tart recipe in honour of National Milk Tart Day which is today! So I dug out my Great Aunt May's tattered recipe book (I've written about her before). There, right in the very front, was our family recipe for milk tart. There are no notes on where it came from, but I found the same recipe scribbled in the margins of my grandmothers book so I know it's a family favourite!   

The pastry is an interesting one - it contains oil, which is a little odd for me, but ensures a ridiculously crumbly pastry. From her other recipes, I can tell Great Aunt May loved a good shortcut, and this one is no exception. This pastry? It doesn't need to be blind baked! Yes, you read correctly. Can I get a hallelujah on that?! 'Cos if you've ever had to fuss with beans and baking paper and all that nonsense, you'll be rejoicing with me now!

The filling is lusciously velvety with just the slightest quiver - I prefer my milk tart a bit softer than most so if you like yours more set, then just increase the cornstarch. This recipe also makes the sweetest little mini milk tarts - I made these using an old-fashioned madeleine tin which belonged to my grandmother. It seemed totally appropriate for the occasion. 

My Family Milk Tart 

Recipe by Great Aunty May

Makes 1 large tart or 24 small tartlets

No-fuss pastry

110g butter, softened

2 tbsp (30ml) castor sugar

2 tbsp (30ml) vegetable oil

1 egg

2 cups (500ml) cake flour

1 tsp (5ml) baking powder

pinch of salt

Filling

600ml milk

2 tbsp (30ml) cornstarch/cornflour

1 tbsp (15ml) cake flour

4 tbsp (60ml) sugar

3 eggs, separated

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp ground cinnamon, plus extra for dusting

Cream the butter and castor sugar until light and fluffy. Add the oil and egg and beat well. Mix in the flour, baking powder and salt to form a soft pastry. 

Press a thin layer of the pastry into a greased standard pie dish. Prick the bottom and bake at 180C for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool. 

For the filling, bring the milk to a boil (I added a cinnamon stick and bay leaf to mine). 

In the meantime, whisk together the cornstarch, flour, sugar, egg yolks, vanilla and cinnamon and a little of the milk to make a creamy paste. Pour the hot milk over the paste, whisking continuously then return to the heat and cook until thickened. 
Whisk the egg whites until stiff then whisk into the still-warm filling. 

Pour the mixture into the baked tart case and sprinkle with extra cinnamon. 

IF YOU LIKED THIS THEN YOU'LL LIKE:

Milk tart pancakes

Milk tart cake

Custard slices

Milk tart pancakes with cinnamon crumble

I've decided to celebrate Heritage month (taken from Heritage Day on the 24 September) by preparing a few traditional South African foods but with a little Katelyn flair! Pancakes (or crepes to the rest of the world) are an integral part of South African culture, particularly famous for being sold at church bazaars or farmer's markets where they come wrapped in wax paper on a paper plate and so steaming-hot that they blister your fingers and melt the cinnamon sugar sprinkled inside. 

It was this traditional sprinkling that gave me the idea to stuff the pancakes with another South African favourite; milk tart. This recipe contains an almost deconstructed milk tart filling; creamy cinnamon-spiked custard and a crunchy, crispy, spicy crumble. Pancakes and milk tart were just meant to be combined and so, I give you, the South African double dessert! 

Milk tart pancakes with cinnamon crumbles

Serves 6

Pancakes

125g cake flour

pinch of salt

2 large eggs

250ml milk

2T melted butter or oil

Milk tart filling

2 cups milk

1 cinnamon stick

80ml cake flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2tsp vanilla

Cinnamon crumbles

1 cup cake flour

2 tsp cinnamon

¼ cup sugar

100g butter, chopped

Cinnamon-sugar, to serve*

Place the flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Whisk the eggs and milk and whisk into the dry ingredients with the butter or oil. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Heat a non-stick pan and ladle a small amount of batter into the pan. Swirl the pan around to evenly coat it with batter. When the edges begin to lift, flip over and cook the other side until brown.
To make the filling, heat half the milk with the cinnamon stick until just below boiling point then set aside to infuse.
Whisk the remaining cold milk with the flour and ground cinnamon to form a smooth paste then whisk in the hot milk.
Cook over a medium heat until thick and the flour is cooked out. Flavour with vanilla and remove the cinnamon stick. Set aside (cover the surface with clingwrap to prevent a skin forming).
Make the crumbles by combining the flour, cinnamon and sugar and rubbing in the butter to form large crumbs. Spread on a baking tray and bake in a preheated oven at 180C for 15-20 minutes, stirring every now and then until golden and crisp. Allow to cool.
Serve the pancakes spread with the milk tart filling, a sprinkling of cinnamon sugar and the crumbles.

*To make the cinnamon sugar, mix 2 tsp ground cinnamon into 1 cup white sugar until combined.

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World Baking Day Challenge: Milk tart cake

It isn't every day that two men in black suits with aviators and ear pieces arrive at your office carrying a locked box. It also isn't every day that you hear the words, 'Katelyn, do you accept the challenge to bake brave?' Erm, hells yes I do! Even though I had no idea what that meant! What kind of an awesome/stupid question is THAT?! After tweeting my answer (I had to resist the urge to just type 'duh') I received the secret code that unlocked the padlock. 'What was in the box?!' I hear you screaming, well, in it was everything I needed to make a ridiculously beautiful-looking milk tart cake. This cake.

It was created by gateau queen Katrien van Zyl for the World Baking Day website and is ranked at level 45/100. Those chocolate curls?! That intricate collar?! Oh my, this was going to be quite a challenge! So the box sat on my counter for a week in the run up to World Baking Day on 19 May in the hope that it would  psyche me up and drum up my bravery. Instead it haunted me until that fateful Sunday morning... 

First up, I sussed out my ingredients (brace yourself, it's quite a list!):

‘Milk tart’ Filling Ingredients

500 ml (2 cups) full fat milk

30 ml (2 tbsp) butter or margarine

1x 385 g can of sweetened condensed milk

1 large egg

45 ml (3 tbsp) cornflour

5 ml (1 tsp) vanilla essence

Powdered cinnamon, to taste

Cake Ingredients:

360 g (3 cups) self-raising flour

350 g (1¾ cup) white sugar

350 g (1½ cups) butter or margarine, softened (or at room temperature)

6 large eggs

80 ml (⅓ cup) milk

15 ml (1 tbsp) vanilla essence

Ganache Coating Ingredients:

125 ml (½ cup) whipping cream

15 ml (1 tbsp) butter or margarine

1 cinnamon stick

375 g white chocolate, chopped into small pieces

Decoration:

50 g dark chocolate, melted

500 ml (2 cups) full fat milk

30 ml (2 tbsp) butter or margarine

1x 385 g can of sweetened condensed milk

1 large egg

45 ml (3 tbsp) cornflour

5 ml (1 tsp) vanilla essence

Powdered cinnamon, to taste

1 x Chocolatier (optional, but definitely advised), preferably Italian, and hot 

Although the original recipe started with the cake, I made the milk tart filling first so it could cool. The filling  is basically a creme patisserie made with condensed milk, because in South Africa, everything is made better by adding condensed milk. Fact. I wanted mine a little lighter, so I folded in some whipped cream once it has cooled. More whipped cream is never a bad thing - ever.

Heat together the milk, margarine and condensed milk in a pot on the stove at medium heat until the margarine has melted. Whisk the egg, cornflour and vanilla essence in a bowl and while whisking, pour some of the heated milk mixture onto the egg mixture. Pour the milk and egg mixture back into the pot and heat it on medium heat on the stove while stirring continuously for about 3 minutes, or until the mixture thickens. As soon as the mixture starts to boil, remove from the heat. Pour the thickened mixture into a bowl, place cling wrap over the surface to prevent a skin forming and place it in the refrigerator until cool, preferably overnight.

That wasn't SO hard! I felt quite chuffed with myself. 

Next, I tackled the cake. I've never actually prepared a cake using this method before - the ingredients list hints at it being a pound cake but the process is somewhat different. Chocolatier then informed me that it is actually a German 'Sandkuchen' or sand cake (you will notice that Chocolatier comes in handy quite often in this post). 

Sift the flour into a mixing bowl and add the sugar, softened margarine and eggs. Mix for 30 seconds with an electric mixer on medium speed. Add the milk and vanilla essence and beat for another 1 minute and 30 seconds or until the mixture looks light and fluffy. Spoon equal amounts of batter into two 20cm lined cake tins and bake for about 50 minutes at 160C or until an inserted skewer comes out clean.

Cakes done, filling done - now for my favourite part, the chocolate! Chop the white chocolate finely so it melts properly - or get a chocolatier to do it for you. I just happened to have one lying around so...

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Gently heat the cream with the cinnamon stick in a pot on the stove. Bring the cream to just below boiling point. Remove the pot from the heat and leave the cream to cool for the cinnamon stick to infuse the cream with its subtle flavour. Place the chopped chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl. Remove the cinnamon stick from the cream and pour the cream over the chopped chocolate. Heat the chocolate and cream mixture in a microwave oven at 20% power or at the Defrost setting. Stir at 2-minute intervals until the mixture is melted and smooth. Leave the ganache in the refrigerator to set for a few hours or overnight.

The next part of the recipe made me shake in my apron. Chocolate curls? Ask me to eat them, I can totally do that. Make them? Ain't nobody got time for that! So, again, having a Chocolatier lying around I put him to work and watched him melt his magic while I sat and enjoyed a glass of wine. This is advisable. No wait, actually it is a must.

Chocolatier warmed the slab of chocolate with his hands (although I strongly suspect the chocolate actually melted because he was standing near it... If you know what I mean!) and then used a knife and a round cookie cutter to make beautiful chocolate curls for the top of the cake. 

Spread three of the layers with ‘milk tart’ filling; sprinkle powdered cinnamon between the layers and stack the layers on top of one another. (It's advisable to assemble the cake back in the springform tin to stop everything squishing out!) Spread some of the ganache over the cake to cover completely then refrigerate until set. Melt the remaining ganache and pour over to make a thin coating. 

Oh be still my beating heart! I got hot Chocolatier to put 2 layers of ganache on the cake, mainly so I could watch him do it twice. Oh yes. 

Measure the height and circumference of the cake and cut a piece of greaseproof paper to this size. Pour 50 g melted chocolate into a zip-lock bag, snip off a small piece at one corner of the bag to make a piping bag and pipe swirls on the greaseproof paper. Before the chocolate sets, lift the paper off your workbench and fold it around the cake with the decorations on the inside. Peel the paper off the chocolate to reveal a lace pattern on the cake.Decorate the top of the cake with powdered cinnamon, cinnamon sticks or chocolate curls.

And then it should look like this... ta-da! NAILED IT! 

This cake really was delicious and not just a pretty face! The challenge here is the chocolate work, leave that out and it's actually a pretty straight-forward, simple and yummy cake! So give it a go!

Now, to come up with another excuse to get hot Chocolatier back in my kitchen...

Festive milk tart & Hertzoggie mince pies

Working on a daily breakfast show on any given day, my colleague Zola and I churn out close to 5 recipes a day which amounts to about 25 recipes per week, 100 a month. That is a lot. And with that many recipes being developed, we sometimes have to get a little more creative (and sometimes - okay most times- we have some down right crazy ideas). This morning's show was all about 'Christmas with a South African twist' because although we love traditional dishes like mince pies and christmas cake, let's be honest, they're not our traditions but rather very European. Enter our local 'n lekker milk tart and hertzoggies. Zola had the genius idea of crumbling up Christmas cake and blending it into the pastry of milk tart; imagine all that fruity flavour stuffed into the crust with the creamy cinnamony smoothness of the milk filling. Yummo! I could eat a whole tart. But then I'd have no space for the pies. I loooove mince pies but sometimes the flavour of the filling can be overpowering and it just needs that something extra - enter the coconut meringue topping which I borrowed/stole (thank you Afrikaans tannies) from the humble hertzoggie. Our camera crew devoured them all with gusto and they're always our harshest critics. So, why not serve something traditional (because, let's face it, for some of us Christmas isn't Christmas without the fruit cake or mince pies) but with a local twist and let's start our own South African festive food traditions!

Photography by Günther Schubert of www.vorsprungstudio.com

Zola's Festive milk tart

Makes 2 tarts

Pastry:

125g butter, softened
½ cup castor sugar
1 egg
2 cups cake flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 cup Christmas pudding, crumbled
Pinch of salt

Cream butter and sugar together and add the egg, beating well to combine.
Add all the other ingredients – to form a stiff dough.
Divide the dough into two, then press into 2 round sandwich cake tins.
Dock the pastry base then blind bake at 180C for 30 min or until the pastry is golden and crispy.

Filling:
4 ½ cups milk
1 cinnamon stick
2 cloves
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 ½ Tbs flour
2 ½ Tbs corn flour
1 tsp vanilla paste
Large Tbs butter
2 tsp ground cinnamon

Place milk, cinnamon stick and cloves into a pot and bring to the boil.
In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, flour, corn flour and vanilla.
Pour the boiling milk into the egg mixture, while continuously whisking.
Pour the mixture through sieve to remove the spices and return to the pot and cook on medium heat until the mixture thickens.
Add the spoonful of butter and stir through.
Pour into the baked pastry shell and sprinkle with the ground cinnamon.
Allow to cool completely cool at room temperature before storing in the fridge.

Photography by Günther Schubert of www.vorsprungstudio.com

Katelyn's Hertzoggie mince pies

Makes 30

210g cake flour

90g corn flour

100g icing sugar

pinch of salt

zest of 1 lemon

250g soft butter, in blocks

1 cup fruit mince

3 egg whites

1 cup castor sugar

2 cups coconut

Combine dry ingredients in a mixer and gradually add the butter until the shortbread comes together.

Press tablespoon fulls of dough into mini muffin tins. Using your finger, make a hole in the centre of each shortbread and fill with fruit mince.

Whisk the egg whites until soft peak stage then beat in the castor sugar until thick and glossy. Fold in the coconut and spoon small amounts on top of the fruit mince (just enough to cover).

Bake at 150˚C for 20 minutes or until golden brown. Allow to cool in the tin before removing and dusting with icing sugar.