Confeitaria Peixinho

Confeitaria Peixinho has made ovos moles on Rua de Coimbra, in the centre of Aveiro, since 1856. Its owners, the O Valor do Tempo group, call it the oldest ovos moles house in Aveiro, and the regional tourist board, Turismo Centro de Portugal, calls it the town’s oldest bakery. If your family wants to try Aveiro’s famous sweet at the source, this is the obvious place to start.

The name means “little fish”, which suits a shop whose sweets are shaped like sea creatures.

Ovos moles means “soft eggs”. The filling is egg yolk cooked slowly with sugar until it turns into a thick, glossy, golden cream. The recipe is about five hundred years old. According to Turismo Centro de Portugal, nuns at Aveiro’s Jesus Monastery created it, and when the convents closed, the recipe was passed down through local families instead. Peixinho uses yolks from hens fed locally, mixed with sugar.

The cream is piped into very thin wafer cases, the same papery wafer used for communion hosts, cut by hand into shapes that come from the Ria de Aveiro, the lagoon the town sits on: clams, mussels, whelks and fish. It also comes in small wooden barrels painted with lagoon scenes, which children like keeping afterwards.

In 2009 ovos moles de Aveiro became the first Portuguese sweet to get the European Union’s Protected Geographical Indication (PGI). That means only sweets made in the Aveiro area, to the traditional method, can use the name. It’s a neat, real example for children of how a place and a food can belong together.

Ovos moles are very sweet and very eggy. Plenty of children take one bite and hand the rest over, so buy one to share before committing to a box. For children who find the filling too rich, Peixinho sells plenty of other things:

• chocolate sardines, a nod to Portugal’s favourite fish
• raivas de Aveiro, thin, crunchy biscuits
• almendrados, little almond sweets
• meringues and “nests”
• bonbons, and sweets called moliceiros after the lagoon boats
• pão de ló, a light Portuguese sponge cake

At Christmas there are seasonal cakes such as bolo-rei (king cake).

This is a sweet shop and tea room, not a restaurant, so don’t expect a lunch menu. Google describes it as having a tea room, and visitors mention seating on the upper floor, which is useful for a sit-down treat with a coffee. It gets busy: Google’s popular-times chart showed it full on a Monday afternoon in late September.

The shop was open until 9pm on the Google listing the business updated in 2026. Its own pages don’t publish hours, so check before a special trip. If you fall for ovos moles, Peixinho also has shops on Rua das Flores in Porto (opened in 2025), on Rua Augusta in Lisbon and at Lisbon airport.

The shop is in the town centre, within walking distance of the canals where moliceiro boats take visitors out. To go further than tasting, the Oficina do Doce runs a short hands-on workshop where children fill and cut their own ovos moles. The Aveiro salt pans show how seawater becomes salt, and the striped houses of Praia da Costa Nova are a short drive to the coast.

Will children like ovos moles?

Some do and some don’t. The filling is sweet egg yolk, so it is rich. Buy one to try before buying a box, and pick a chocolate sardine as a back-up.

Where can you eat ovos moles in Aveiro?

Confeitaria Peixinho on Rua de Coimbra has made them since 1856 and has seating upstairs.

Are ovos moles safe for children with egg allergies?

No. They are made from egg yolks and sugar in a wafer case. Ask staff about the other sweets.

Can children make their own ovos moles?

Not at Peixinho, but the Oficina do Doce in Aveiro runs workshops where children fill and cut their own.

Is there a Peixinho shop in Porto or Lisbon?

Yes. Peixinho opened a shop on Rua das Flores in Porto in 2025, and has one on Rua Augusta in Lisbon and one at Lisbon airport.