Sweet
Mlečnik
Pastry sheets soaked in milk and eggs that set in the oven into something between a pie and a custard.
Recipe from Туѓино Јабано
- Prep
- 25 min
- Cook
- 50 min
- Total
- 1 hr 15 min
- Fasting
- Not suitable
Ingredients 9 ingredients
Method
- Grease a rectangular tin. Take a sheet, crumple it loosely in your hands like paper and drop it into the tin — do not flatten it. The gaps are what hold the milk.
- Carry on that way until all the sheets are used, flicking melted butter over every third one.
- Bake the pastry alone at 180 °C for about 15 minutes, until the peaks begin to colour. Skipping this step gives a wet mlečnik instead of a layered one.
- Meanwhile whisk the milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla sugar, lemon zest and salt into a smooth custard.
- Take the tin out and pour the custard over slowly, in several goes, letting the pastry drink it in before you add more.
- Return it to the oven and bake for another 30–35 minutes, until the custard has set and the peaks of pastry are deep gold.
- Let the mlečnik cool completely in the tin before cutting — hot, it collapses. Dust with icing sugar.
If you cannot find it
Substitutions that work outside Macedonia.
- Thin pastry sheets
- Filo; work fast and keep the rest under a damp cloth.
- Butter
- Oil, though the flavour noticeably suffers — here the butter is part of the dish.
- Lemon zest
- Orange zest, or a teaspoon of vanilla extract.
