Pasteis De Nata (Portugese Custard Tarts)

I had experimented with freezing the left over egg yolks from the pavlovas I had been rustling up earlier and thought it was time to give them a go! Wow! I shall definitely be doing this again.  I have read about perhaps whisking each egg yolk in a small amount of sugar before freezing, but I didn't do any of that and they seemed to be fine.
This is about as close I feel I could get to this recipe but I will keep up with the experimenting to try and get a better flakier pastry as the ones in Porto last year.  On the whole a fab recipe from allrecipes.co.uk
I amended the quantity of pastry but other than that, it worked a treat! 

It is fine to fill them to around two thirds full as they totally rise and then deflate! 

Ingredients

• 350g packet puff pastry
• 225ml (8 fl oz) milk
• 3 tablespoons cornflour
• 200g (7 oz) caster sugar
• 1 vanilla pod
• 6 egg yolks

Prep Time 20 mins

1.

Preheat oven to 190 C / Gas mark 5. Lightly grease a 12-cup muffin tin and line bottom and sides of cups with puff pastry.

2.

In a saucepan, combine milk, cornflour, sugar and vanilla. Cook, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens. Place egg yolks in a medium bowl. Slowly whisk 1/2 of the hot milk mixture into egg yolks. Gradually add egg yolk mixture back to remaining milk mixture, whisking constantly. Cook, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes, or until thickened. Remove vanilla pod.

3.

Fill pastry-lined muffin tin with mixture and bake in preheated oven for 20 minutes, or until pastry is golden brown and filling is lightly browned on top