What they are like and where to eat Pastels de Belém in Lisbon

Un trip to Lisbon It is incomplete if you have not had the opportunity to taste the Belém cakes.

If you don't particularly like sweets, you should know that it is the most characteristic and famous of the gastronomy of Portugal, and if you like sweets, you have an essential date with the Belém cakes.

But don't be confused with its name as pastels de nata. 

What are Belem cakes like?

This delicious sweet known in Portugal as Belém cakes: cream cakes, it is actually a sweet made with a custard cream based on egg yolk, milk and sugar, which rests on a puff pastry, which is sprinkled with sugar glass and cinnamon.

You can buy Belem cakes in any of the numerous pastry shops you find in Lisbon and surroundings, or you can taste them in any cafeteria, as breakfast or snack, or in any restaurant, as dessert.

Curiosities and history of Belém cakes

But if in your trip to Lisbon you have time to come visit one of the monuments of Belem, coastal neighborhood of the capital, you have a must-see date for taste the Belem cakes in the historic factory and pastry shop where they have been produced since 1837, which jealously guards the original recipe.

You should know that this delicious sweet was already made by the nuns who resided in the Jerónimos Monastery of Belém during the 18th century.

After Liberal Revolution of 1820, in Portugal the convents were closed, which occurred in 1834 in the case of the Jeromes.

From then on, the small grocery store in the old sugar cane refinery next to the monastery began to sell the Belém cakes.

By then there were already quite a few visitors who came to Belém to see its monuments, the monastery y tower, and the cakes, little by little, became a gastronomic monument.

At least that's what it seems to me.

How to eat the typical pastries in Belém

Now when you arrive in Belem, next to the monastery, on the ground floor of a typical house with blue tile facade you find the small store that is always very busy with tourists shopping Belém cakes.

But it is recommended that you enter the interior of the establishment, where you will discover successive large rooms with tables where tourists sit at taste the cakes.

Here you will try the receta original, which serves as a guide to prepare the artisanal ingredients of Belem cakes in the call Secrets Workshop.

While Belem cakes They can be eaten cold, from my point of view it is when they are still hot that their flavor is best appreciated.

And this is how they serve it in the always crowded old pastry factory of Belém.

Don't be surprised that you have to wait to find a free table to sit down, but once you are seated, you will be well attended to by their expert waiters.

The prices of Belém cakes They are not expensive at all, around one euro.

Specifically, if you take them at the Belém factory, a cake will cost you 0,95 euros, a bottle of mineral water, 1 euro, and a coffee cappuccino, 2,10 euros.

How many Belém cakes will you take? Me, the last time, three.