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South African Milk Tart — Traditional, NEW INTRO ON 22 Sept 08: This recipe has had such strange reviews that I thought a new intro was needed! After Kiwidutch’s 2 star review I DID find a major typo in the recipe and corrected it This recipe has a hundred small variations! As to those who believe that my facts are wrong: the traditional milk tart ( melktert ) was made by cooks in olden days who made their own puff or flaky pastry, long before it was available frozen! The filling was then poured into the raw flaky pastry, sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon, and baked in a hot oven until puffy and golden brown Naturally this puff settled, like a souffle To be at its best it was served warm As time went by, cooks also used short pastry as well, but this needed to be blind-baked before the filling could be added and the final baking done The present-day shortcuts to be found in abundance in bakeries, shops and home industries in South Africa are not really melktert Melktert is NOT a custard poured into a crumbly crust and left to set That must be the melktert my critics know and assume to be real milk tart But those tarts/pies are the kind they used to push into people’s faces in old slapstick movies After the two opinions posted, puzzled by the opinions, I checked all my older recipe books***, and found that all of them, in fact, said flaky pastry or puff pastry , and all of them gave a recipe for a filling to be baked in the crust There are better recipes than this one You only need to find the one which works best for you But a filling which is merely poured into a ready-made crust is not the real thing And the tannies will be glad I rewrote this intro They must be turning in their graves about those gloppy custard pies being sold as melktert these days! ***Kook en Geniet/Cook and Enjoy It (Mrs S J de Villiers), Reader’s Digest South African Cookbook (Chief Consultant Philippa Cheifitz), Traditional Cookery in Southern Africa (Judy Desmond), Our Best Traditional Recipes (Vida Heard & Lesley Faull) — and also several cookbooks published in country districts , This may depend very much where you are from in South Africa and is obviously subject to personal taste I have come across milk tart with puff pastry but never thought it was traditional or original I’m not saying it’s not as good but the filling cannot be like in this recipe! This ends up like a sponge and it’s not Milk Tart Not around the West rand of Joburg or around Mosselbaai or Eastern Transvaal These are the area’s I’ve had Melktert and that’s my opinion , this is definitely not traditional milk tart as I know it – it was more like a sponge type of cake but not even spongy which I had to throw away I’m used to the custardy type but mine was nothing like this – I guess I’ll look up melktert next time
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