Recipe #11 : Egg Tarts

Today's recipe was inspired by Tastemade after Oily shared me the recipe video.

It has been a while since I last baked something,

So, let's make some egg-cellent fun now!

I tried comparing few different egg tarts recipes online,

and in the end came to my own amended version of recipe.

But still, the result is not the most perfect one yet.

Ingredients :

= Pastry Dough =
250gm plain flour
80gm butter
40gm margerin
1 egg
50gm castor sugar

= Custard Filling =
4 eggs
3/4 cups water
6 tablespoon sugar
pinch of salt
1/4 cup evaporated milk
dash of vanilla

Directions :

= Making the Pastry =
1) Mix all pastry dough ingredients together and bring together until smooth. If the dough is too harden, add more butter / margerin. If the dough is too watery, add more flour.

2) Make dough into one giant ball, cover with plastic wrap and then refrigerate for 30 minutes until the dough is firm.

= Making the Custard Filling = 
1) Melt sugar and salt with water, mix until dissolved.
2) Whisk the 4 eggs. Stir in sugar water and also evaporated milk plus dash of vanilla. Stir and combine everything well.
3) Strain the filling to ensure no lumps and bubbles.

= Baking the Tarts =
1) Take the dough out and divide equally into smaller portions.
2) Wipe a layer of margerin unto the tart mould / pan tray with your fingers.
3) Press the dough into the ready mould / pan tray and try to keep the dough layer uniform in thickness and avoid a thick bottom. Trim off the excess pastry.
4) Use a fork to prick the base of pastry before baking, which will prevent the pastry from puffing up.
5) Bake the pastry at 180'c for 10 minutes until half baked.
6) Pour the prepared egg filling into the half baked tart pastry, and bake at 180'c for another 15-20 minutes.

I have snapped some of my masterpiece progress and found few little tips while baking :

I am using these single steel tart moulds for my egg tart baking.

And if you don't have these, you can also use an egg tart pan tray with the flowery shape.

I coated my moulds with a thin layer of margerin,

Which you could use butter as well. 

Starting the recipe from scratch.

In the process of mixing all the raw ingredients.

In the process of whisking 4 eggs.

After dough is ready, they are being filled into the steel mould,

And pricking it with a fork.

As you can see from the photo above, my dough is over oily,

Which only means I have used unbalance portion of margerin / butter over the flour.

 And the fact that my tarts base is being too thick. HAHAHA.

After that, they are being put into the oven,

In order to half bake the pastry first.

 

After 10 minutes, the half baked pastry are being taken out, 

And to be poured with the custard filling in the middle,

And another round of baking again for the final product.

After the first successful batch, I decided to do more of it with different moulds and sizes.

And I also try another version of tarts, where you can see from the photo above,

The first five round tarts on top of the tray are tarts with un-baked pastry.

I wanted to know what will happen if I am to bake my pastry together with the filling in one go.

Tarts in the process of baking inside the oven.

This is the actual result of my first batch egg tarts.

As you can see, the tarts should have a small gap between the outer crust and the steel mould.

And when you turn the mould downwards, the tart should pop right out from it.

Thereafter, only that you can transfer the tarts to colourful paper cups.

The thing is due to my over thick crust base,

My custard filling seems to be ugly and looked quite stingy on the portion itself.

HAHAHA!

But after trying out the taste of it, I am pretty glad that it was good.

The crust was nice too, but it would be perfect if it can get a little more crispier.

Even my colleagues said that it tasted like outside selling egg tarts.

If you are wondering what happen to the five round ''experiment tarts'',

It failed to look or taste nice.

Either it was over-baked crust + bubbly custard filling,

Or else it would be un-baked crust + watery un-cooked custard filling.

LOLness.

So okay, next round I shall improve on my dough making and tarts moulding skills. LOL.