Melktert

I have an African friend, who's been visiting Canada for the past few months. One day when she was over for tea she was looking at an African cookbook I have and she pointed out a couple of recipes that "you have to make" Melktert (or Milktart in English) was one of them.

First, the recipe said that it was better and perhaps more authentic with puff pastry than with regular pie pastry, so that's what I used. If I make it again I will use my standard pie dough recipe. This is because puff pastry is too puffy to carry a proper pie filling. I thawed the puff pastry as directed on the package, then rolled it out into my pie plates. It puffed up into a big beautiful, golden pillow so I scored it about an inch in from the edge and pushed the middle piece in a little. This left me with something reminiscent of a pie shell suitable for filling but kinda messy looking. I'd recommend using your own pie recipe, blind baked. Even if your usual pie dough is from frozen. My mom uses those all the time and they're perfectly fine. It's what's inside that counts.

The filling;
4 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
2 Tbsp butter
2 or 3 cinnamon sticks

Bring this mixture just to a boil then remove from the heat. This is called scalding the milk. Take the cinnamon sticks out.

2 Tbsp flour
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1/2 tsp salt

Mix in a small bowl with a whisk and pour in about 1/2 a cup of the hot milk. Whisk until it's smooth. Add 4 egg yolks and whisk until smooth. Put the milk on medium heat and pour the egg mixture into the milk slowly while whisking.

A couple of notes here;
-cooling the milk a little, then adding the eggs, then pouring the mixture back into the milk is called tempering. If you put eggs into hot milk you'd have egg lumps, which is not what you want. You want the eggs to thicken the milk along with the flour and the cornstarch
-I opened my cornstarch container to discover approximately 1 Tbsp of cornstarch. I added that and threw in about 4 extra Tbsp of flour.

Stir the milk mixture constantly over medium heat for about 5 minutes to thicken it. Let it cool for 5 minutes, then stir in 1/2 tsp vanilla and 1/2 tsp almond extract.

At this point you have pudding. Or custard.

Whip 4 egg whites with 1/3 cup sugar until stiff peaks form, but don't overbeat them or they will become dry and brittle.

Fold in the custard mixture and pour into 2 pie shells. Bake at 400 F for 10 minutes, then turn the heat down to 350F and bake another 10-15 minutes.

Traditional garnish is a dusting of cinnamon. It was all just too white for me so I'm serving it with some fresh strawberries.

It's still in the oven. I hope it turns out.