Pastel Da Natas at Lisbon Cooking School

Cooking Lisbon offers a variety of different cooking classes.

​All around Portugal, locals and tourists are devouring little round tarts, exploding with crispy pastry sprinkled with cinnamon or powdered sugar.

These little beauties are called pastel de nata. (They are Pastéis de Nata, if you have more than one). 

Even I've fallen under their spell, even though they are not gluten free.  Thank goodness for Gluten Ease to help keep my tummy happy when it encounters gluten.

My friend, Christie, invited me to go to a Pastel de Nata Making class at Cooking Lisbon.  I said absolutely!

Origins of the Pastel De Nata

The name means cream pastries but it doesn’t really tell the whole story.  Our instructor (below) told us how they came into being.

Pastéis de Nata born in the 18th century at Jerónimos Monastery in the Belém suburb of Lisbon. At the time, monasteries and convents used huge quantities of egg-whites to starch their uniforms.
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Instead of letting the egg yolks go to waste, they began popping the egg cream into a crispy pastry cup.  In fact, this pastry was so good, they realized they could sell them to make some money.

The basic ingredients for this sweet treat.

There were 9 people in our class.  So each of us got to perform a portion of the recipe.

In the oven they go.

Just out of the oven...

Just look at those layers ...

Each participant got two Natas.  I decided to top one with powdered sugar the other with cinnamon.

After the class, Cooking Lisbon emailed all the class participants the recipe. 

Overall, I think this class is an amazing way to get a hands-on, authentic Portuguese experience in Lisbon. It was really fun being able to actually make them ourselves.

You can find their class offerings on their official website.