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My mother is a master baker and I have collected quite a few of her recipes. There is the easy to make date cookies that she used to send to school functions and the coffee cookies that she filled the cookie jars with on our annual trip to the sea. Her cheese muffins are the best in the world and we are addicted to her frosted chocolate cake.

My favorite recipe though is the also the favorite of my people. Since forever the Afrikaans speaking South Africans have been making and eating milktart. It has become such a staple that the other ethnic groups of my country have also started to eat milktart.

You can find milktart everywhere in South Africa. Supermarkets sell a cheap version of it. Restaurants sell a slice of milktart as pudding. At fancy weddings and lavish funerals mini milktarts will be served and gobbled up first.

Every South African knows though that the best place to buy a proper milktart is at the annual church bazaar or fair. Ladies like my mother supply these airs with their home made miltarts and they get snapped up like...well, like milktarts.

Milktart can be described as something that Americans would call custard pie. A soft flaky crust is filled with an egg and milk mixture and is then sprinkled with cinnamon.

The crust gets to be baked first and then the filling is poured inside. The filling is cooked on the stove, so the pie is not baked twice.

My mother's recipe makes three milktarts. Three is not all that much considering that the first one gets eaten as soon as it has cooled down a bit. The second one is eaten, very fast I might add, by the guests you made the milktart for in the first place.

So what happens to the third one? The third milktart is used as leverage. This milktart gets given to anybody that you need to build credit with. The snooping neighbor, the lady who looked after the dogs or one of your children's teachers.

They are never able to refuse a milktart. Once you had them taste a proper home made milktart they are yours forever.

So without much further ado, here is my mother's milktart recipe.

CRUST

2 cups of flour
half a cup of sugar
4 tablespoons of margarine
2 teaspoons of baking powder
1 egg

Cream the sugar and margarine together.
Mix in the egg.
Sieve the dry ingredients into your mixture.
Mix together very well, your dough should be a bit stiff.
Divide the dough into three parts and line three pie tins with it.

I use aluminum pie tins and keep on reusing them until they fall apart.

Prick the crusts with a fork so that the crust will not "swell" during baking. You can bake the crusts blind if you want to, but it is not necessary. Bake the crusts at about 180 degree Celsius for about fifteen minutes. Your crusts should be all nice and golden.

FILLING
1 liter of milk
1 cup of sugar
3 eggs
2 and a half table spoons of flour
2 and a half table spoons of cornflour

Mix the sugar, flour, cornflour and eggs together.
Put the milk in a large pot on the stove, when it just starts to boil throw the milk over the egg mixture.
Put everything back in the pot on the stove and keep on heating your mixture while constantly stirring.
Once it starts to boil and has thickened, you can pour the filling into the three crusts.
Sprinkle cinnamon on top.

A word of warning, the filling gets very hot quickly. Be wary of the bottom getting burned. This mixture is also very hot, so do not spill any on yourself.

The only thing left to do, is the taste test. Let the milktart cool down a bit and then you will realize why the Afrikaners of South Africa have such a special place in their hearts and tummies for milktart!

Learn more about this author, Marina Shemesh.
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