9 Portuguese Pastries Beyond the Pastel de Nata

Portuguese pastry has a strange origin: convents used egg whites to starch habits and clarify wine, and the leftover yolks became sweets. That is why so much of it is yellow, rich and named after a monastery.

## The nine 1. Travesseiro, from Sintra. Flaky pastry folded around almond cream, best warm. 2. Queijada de Sintra, smaller and older, made with fresh cheese and cinnamon. 3. Pastel de feijao, made with white beans and almond, which sounds wrong and is not. 4. Bola de Berlim, the beach doughnut filled with egg cream, sold along the sand in summer. 5. Ovos moles from Aveiro, egg yolk and sugar in a thin wafer shell shaped like shells and fish. 6. Pao de lo, a soft sponge cake, sometimes deliberately underbaked in the centre. 7. Jesuita, layers of puff pastry under a hard sugar glaze. 8. Bolo de arroz, a plain rice flour muffin, the standard mid-morning cake with coffee. 9. Toucinho do ceu, an almond and egg cake whose name translates as bacon from heaven.

## Where to find them Every neighbourhood pastelaria has most of this list. The regional ones stay regional: travesseiros in Sintra, ovos moles in Aveiro, queijadas in Sintra and Pereira.

## Practical notes Order a bica with the pastry, which is what an espresso is called in Lisbon. Portuguese cakes are usually eaten standing at the counter mid-morning or mid-afternoon.

On a private day, the pastry stop is normally built into the itinerary rather than left to chance, in Belem for custard tarts and in Sintra for travesseiros. It is one of the small stops nobody skips.