Chocolate-It's What's for Dinner

Pasteis de Nata (Portuguese Custard Tarts) Well I had to clean my oven because I made these Pasteis de Nata . They were well worth the clean though. It all started because my eldest sent me a picture of them from Portugal (trying to make me jealous - which she succeeded). They looked so delicious that I had to look for a recipe to see how they were made.  You make your own puff pastry, let the dough chill, press the dough into cupcake tins, pour in the custard and bake.  That last baking part is what led to the dirty oven.  The dough was so buttery (which is what makes them so delicious), that it began to ooze out of the dough. Well you know once it starts oozing, it goes all over the bottom of the oven, then there is a LOT of smoke, and thoughts that the oven might be on fire, and then a whole big mess to clean up. Did I mention there was a lot of smoke. I mean a real lot of smoke! Would I do it all again?? HELL YES! I did a raggedy rectangle roll out of about 21x...

You know sometimes I just see a recipe and I know I have to make it immediately! This was one of those. First I was curious about how the three layer thing worked. I mean how do they form? Yeah I know it's that scientific stuff going on here. Baking is really chemistry blah, blah, blah.  Well this is really the type of chemistry I can get into. There were a few things I changed up in the recipe (you know I can never leave a recipe alone!).  I, of course, added 1 tsp of chocolate extract. I also made the chocolate batter before whipping the egg whites. It didn't make sense to whip egg whites and then have them sitting around deflating while I worked on the batter. The batter came nearly to the top and I was afraid that it might go over.  I was a little hesitant and decided to put a pan under the baking dish in the oven-just in case.  Ugh nothing worse than cleaning baked on cake off the oven floor! But my worries were totally unsubstantiated - there was no spill-ov...