Friday, November 21, 2008

Egg Tarts (of the Portuguese kind) Revisited

I LOVE egg tarts. I had the opportunity to visit Macau earlier this year and considered my trip there complete only after I had a taste of their infamous egg tarts. Such was my LOVE for this delightful pastry.

I've tried egg tarts from many different cafes and bakeries and came to a conclusion that there are basically 2 types of crusts; shortcrust pastry that crumbles with each delectable bite or puff pastry which is light and flaky. I LOVE them both. Anything goes for me as long as they're egg tarts. 

I am not too happy with the results of the egg tarts I made the last time. So I decided to give it another try but I have a confession to make. I took a shortcut. Didn't make the pastry from scratch this time. Instead, I got frozen puff pastry from Cold Storage. Ok ok, so I was a teensy bit lazy and took the easy way out. Maybe you should too ;)

Right, here's what you'll need;

  • 1 packet frozen puff pastry (I didn't use all of them though)
  • 4 egg yolks
  • 1/3 cup castor sugar
  • 1/3 cup whipping cream
  • 1/3 cup milk (I used low fat)
  • 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
And here's what you do;
  1. Thaw puff pastry according to instructions on packaging.
  2. Preheat oven to 200C. 
  3. Beat yolks, sugar, whipping cream, milk and vanilla extract for a few minutes. Strain the mixture if you must. I was in lazy mode so I didn't.
  4. Grease muffin moulds or ramekins with melted butter.
  5. Dust working surface with some flour and roll out pastry to desired thickness. 
  6. Cut rolled pastry using an upside down glass or bowl (whatever that's handy) and line into moulds by pressing gently on bottom and side.
  7. Pour egg mixture into lined moulds about 80% (90% for me as I was feeling rather mischevious).
  8. Bake for about 15-20 minutes or until crust turns golden brown and the filling has set. Oh yes, those brown spots on the filling would be lovely.

i made the first 2 using ramekins. And I took them out of the oven before the filling could caramelised with lovely brown spots.

But the custard filling looked great though. 
And it tasted good too, neither too sweet nor milky.

The rest were mini ones as I didn't have my regular muffin pan with me. 
This time I left them in the oven for a little longer. It was kind of exhilirating to watch the filling bulged and ballooned to the verge of bursting but it never did. Don't know if they would but I figured that it would be a rather messy affair if it did.
They're sort of cute aren't they :)


4 comments:

Rames said...

Hey u got blog wor! Didnt know hehe.

cupcakesordeath said...

rames! yalor, just on food though :)

DEATH BY NOODLES said...

Egg tarts (dan taat) are very popular here (San Francisco) too. The most popular bakery for egg tarts is Golden Gate on Grant, even the white people line up outside. I've never made them, though. I don't bake very well.

cupcakesordeath said...

hei DBN, it's very easy, you should try it some time :)