Recipes / Dessert
Melktert (milk tart, heritage recipe)
A cinnamon milk custard set in a crisp pastry case, baked in the oven or a kettle braai, adapted from an 1891 Cape cookbook.
- Prep
- 30 min
- On the fire
- 45 min
- Plan ahead
- 2 hours cooling
- Serves
- 8, one 23 cm (9 inch) tart
Ingredients
Pastry
Filling
To finish
Method
Cooking on gas?
- Set up for indirect heat: light the outside burners (or one side of a two-burner grill) and leave the burner under the food off.
- Close the lid and adjust the lit burners until the lid thermometer reads the temperature in the recipe. Put a drip tray under meat.
- Gas holds a steady heat, so you can skip any step that adds fresh coals. Go by a thermometer in the food rather than the clock.
- Heat the oven to 200°C (400°F), or set up a kettle braai for indirect heat with medium coals on both sides and the lid on until it holds about 200°C (400°F).
- Line a 23 cm (9 inch) pie dish with the pastry and prick the base with a fork. Chill it for 15 minutes.
- Cover the pastry with baking paper, fill it with the beans and bake for 12 minutes. Lift out the paper and beans and bake for 5 minutes more, until pale gold.
- Turn the oven down to 180°C (350°F). On a kettle braai, open the bottom vents halfway to bring it down.
- Put all but 60 ml (1/4 cup) of the milk in a pot with the cinnamon stick, sugar and salt. Bring it to a simmer.
- Mix the cornflour with the cold milk you kept back until smooth. Whisk it into the hot milk.
- Stir over low heat for 4 to 5 minutes until thick. Take out the cinnamon stick, stir in the butter and leave to cool for 15 minutes.
- Whisk the eggs and vanilla into the warm custard, a little at a time, until smooth.
- Pour the filling into the pastry case and bake for 20 to 25 minutes, in the middle of the kettle away from the coals.
- Dust the top with ground cinnamon while warm. Cool for at least 2 hours before you slice it.
Done when: the pastry is golden and the filling is set at the edges with only a slight wobble in the centre.
Tips
- Let the custard cool before the eggs go in. Hot custard scrambles them.
- On a kettle braai, put a pizza stone or an upturned baking tray under the dish so the base does not scorch.
- If the top puffs or cracks, it is too hot. Lower the heat and bake a few minutes longer.
Melktert is one of the best-known South African sweets, and Hildagonda Duckitt called her 1891 version an “Old Dutch speciality”. Her filling is milk simmered with cinnamon and sugar, thickened with cornflour, enriched with eggs and baked in a pastry shell. This version keeps those ingredients, adds a pinch of salt and a little more sugar, and gives a method for baking it in a covered kettle. See kettle braai indirect setup for the fire.
Source
Adapted from Hilda's "Where is it?" of Recipes by Hildagonda J. Duckitt (1891), public domain.