← Nouns Cooking · Bakery

Ingredients

• 320 g all-butter puff pastry (1 ready-rolled sheet)
• 200 g caster sugar
• 100 ml Water
• 1 Cinnamon stick
• 1 strip of lemon peel (no white pith)
• 300 ml whole milk
• 25 g plain flour
• 1 tbsp Cornflour (cornstarch)
• 6 egg yolks
• ½ tsp Vanilla extract
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon and icing sugar, to dust (optional)

Method

1. Unroll the pastry and roll it up tightly from the short end into a log. Wrap and chill for 30 min. Butter a 12-hole muffin tin.
2. Simmer the sugar, water, cinnamon stick and lemon peel for 3 min to make a syrup, then take off the heat.
3. Whisk the flour and cornflour with a splash of the milk to a paste, then whisk in the rest of the milk. Cook in a pan over medium heat, whisking, for 3–4 min until thickened. Off the heat, pour in the hot syrup through a sieve, whisking. Cool for 5 min, then whisk in the yolks and vanilla.
4. Heat the oven as hot as it goes, 250°C (230°C fan, 480°F) or more. Cut the pastry log into 12 slices. Put one in each muffin hole, spiral up, and with wet thumbs press it out from the centre and up the sides so it is thin at the base and stands just above the rim.
5. Fill each case three-quarters full with custard.
6. Bake for 12–15 min until the pastry is deep golden and crisp and the custard is puffed with dark, blistered spots. Cool in the tin for 10 min, then lift out. Dust with cinnamon and icing sugar if you like and eat warm.

Tips

• A really hot oven is the secret to the scorched tops; bake on the top shelf.
• Do not boil the custard after the yolks go in, or it will scramble.

Sources

Written in our own words after cross-checking these recipes:

BBC Good Food Irish Examiner