Baking with Christina!

Throughout the No Man is Her Master series, Christina Kohl's love of cakes and pastries is well established. One of her favorite things to eat in Bruges is mattentaart, small pastry tarts filled with almond-flavored cheese curd called mattenbrij, I must confess that Christina's penchant for mattentaart stems from my own love of the delicious little cakes that I sampled first in the Flemish village of Lierde. Later, I was delighted to find they had an origin in the Middle Ages, so I incorporated them into Christina's saga.

If you aren't going to Belgium soon and would like to give them a try, here is a recipe I found (but sadly not the one from the Middle Ages ):

The recipe given should be enough for 5 small or 1 large mattentaarten.

Puff pastry dough:

o 500g flour

o 400g of butter

o 1 Cup of water

o 1 pinch salt

Filling:

o Round tins/ramekins or 1 large round tin

o 2.3 liters of fresh milk

o 1.2 liters of fresh buttermilk

o 4 eggs + white of one extra egg to brush on the mattentaarten

o 235 g sugar

o Vanilla extract to taste

o 85g ground almonds

Preparation:

Preparing the filling: bring the milk to a boil. As soon as it boils add the buttermilk. Keep on high heat for 15 min or so until the milk starts to curdle. Remove from the heat and drain in a cheesecloth overnight. The following day, drain the leaked bits from the cheesecloth. Take the remaining curd and add the following: egg yolks, whipped egg whites, sugar, almonds, and vanilla extract.

Preheat oven to 225°c.

Sift the flour and sprinkle the salt. Mix in 1/3 of the butter and add water as needed to form a firm ball of dough. Then roll out the dough in cross shape. Knead the remaining butter into a ball and put it on the dough. Fold the dough and roll it out – it should be 1cm thick. Then fold the dough into thirds, and let rest for fifteen minutes. Roll out the dough 3 times, and let rest again. Then place the pastry in the tins – make sure it is tightly pushed – and add the filling. Finally, place a layer of puff pastry on top of the filling. Remove excess dough carefully with a knife. After, brush the top of the pastry with egg whites. Using a pair of scissors make a small cross-shaped incision in the middle. Bake for 30 min