Today is National Milk Tart Day in South Africa! The Milk Tart is a tart that is loved by all – the Milk Tart, or Melktert in Afrikaans is part of South Africa’s history!
This is a puff pastry crust filled with a creamy filling, topped with cinnamon and baked. The outcome – delicious custardy tart, perfect at any time! Thought to have originated from when the Dutch settled in South Africa, the milk tart has a distinctive South African flavour.
Here is a recipe for you to try the milk tart at home! It comes from the first ever cookbook in South Africa Kook en Geniet, an Afrikaans lady wrote it and it was only translated into English decades later as Cook and Enjoy. Tannie Ina’s ( S.J.A de Villiers) cook book can still be found in many houses in South Africa!
Ingredients:
2 cups (500ml) milk
1 cinnamon stick
1/4 cup (62 ml) sugar
3 table spoons (37 ml) cake flour
1 table spoon (12.5 ml) con starch (maizena)
1/4 tea spoon (1 ml) salt
2 table spoons (25 ml) butter
3 eggs (separate yolk and white)
Puff pastry (buy pre-rolled, frozen and thaw)
Method:
- Preheat oven to 425 degreed F (220 C)
- Boil milk with cinnamon stick in
- Beat egg white until stiff and frothy
- Mix sugar, flour, constarch, salt
- Add warm mik slowly while stirring with wooden spoon (be careful not to create lumps)
- Bring it to a slow boil and stir continuously for 5 minutes until it is thick and cooked (consistency of porridge)
- Remove from heat, remove cinnamon stick and let mixture cool slightly
- Beat the egg yolks and add
- Fold egg white in until it is blended through
- Line pie dish with puff pastry
- Add filling.
- Bake for 20 minutes in hot oven at 425 degrees F and reduce heat to 375 degrees F after the first 10 minutes.
- Remove from oven, let it cool slightly and sprinkle cinnamon sugar over the baked filling.
- Serve warm.
(Can also be served cold and can be frozen and warmed up again before serving.)
