Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Egg Tarts

Egg tarts are delicious. I especially love the ones they have at dim-sum. Their crispy, flaky crusts with a sweet egg filling always leave me craving for another one. I made egg tarts for my first time a few years back and I had to substitute some ingredients. That resulted in a plain crust that did not taste good. The filling was also ok. I do remember the difficulty I had in prying out the tarts from the tart cups, one by one, pledging to never make them again. A few years later, I changed my mind because I had discovered Christine's Recipes, a great blog to refer to for Asian recipes; there I found this egg tart recipe. However, the crust of this egg tart is the cookie type, kind of like shortbread, not those flaky types.

Here is the recipe. Christine's Recipes is a well organized blog that makes it easy to locate recipes I might be interested in. Also, as a beginner level cook, the recipes are simple enough for me to be able to make them. I haven't had a chance to actually cook some things, as you can tell from my long list of "things to cook", but I hope to hone my cooking skills during the summer. Anyway, back to egg tarts.
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Butter and confectioner's sugar ready to be creamed.

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Sifting in the flour.
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In the process of mixing the crust.
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What the texture of the crust should look like after it is uniformly mixed.

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Evaporated Milk

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The whisked eggs.
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Whisk in the evaporated milk.

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Now, roll out the dough so that it is around 1/2 cm thick.

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I cut out the crust with the tart tins because I do have biscuit cutters. Anyway, the only hard part was getting the "circles" out because of their frilly edges.
I poured the filling into a measuring cup.
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That way I can easily pour it into the separate tins.

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The messy kitchen. So many things to clean up!
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I first baked a tart in the toaster to see if it would stick to the tart tin. It didn't. I did this to see if I would need to butter the tins. It turns out perfectly. I guess it's because there is already a lot of butter in the crust.
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The baking process of egg tarts require you to open the oven door a few inches during the last few minutes so that the eggs won't puff up.
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Here's what I learned:
Make your crust taller or pour less filling into the tart tins unless you want to have a hard time getting the tarts out. If too much filling is poured in, then when it's baking it will bubble out and caramelize. (I think that's how you describe it) This leads to egg tarts that are stuck to the tin. I had to use a toothpick to loosen the sides to get the tarts out.

Don't make your tart's crust so tall that it goes over the rims of the tins. Why? Because if you make it too tall, you will have a hard time getting the tart out. The cause of this is that if the tart is not loose, you will need to "pry" it out, but in doing so you might break some of the tarts' edges.

Good luck. :)

4 comments:

  1. I definitely have to try this! Thanks for the tips at the end!

    ReplyDelete
  2. no problem. :) If you want to save the tarts for another time after you finish baking them you can wait for them to cool down before wrapping them up separately and freezing them. Afterward,when you feel like eating it just take it out of the freezer and let it sit for a while before rebaking it, that way the middle won't be frozen still after you bake it. The texture won't change and it will still taste fresh.

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  3. Hi Esther,
    I make my tarts up to the rim and fill the eggs up to only about 1-2mm below the rim, If I can I'd fill up as much as possible because the egg custard sort of shrinks a bit after baking, and one will be left with lesser custard.
    Insert a toothpick between the tart and pan, and it wil be easily released, and that's as long as you use aluminium and not those cheapo metal tins (that looks silvery too, but cost half of aluminium ones). I think the reason for the tart to stick to the pan is that your tart is leaking at the base. Those that I make, if they leak, they'll stick, if not they'll come off easily.

    If the custard puffs up they are cooked already, and most probably, overcooked. Try to bake it until they no longer look jiggly and leave them in the oven for 10 minutes to further cook the custard with the residual heat. The custard might feel sticky abit when hot, but when it has cooled down, it'll be alright.

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  4. Hi Wendy,
    Thanks for your advice. :) I think for this recipe, the egg custard won't shrink, at least it didn't for me. Yea, the tarts got stuck because the filling overflowed and made the tins sticky.

    I don't know a whole bunch about egg tarts, so I followed the recipes instructions to a tee. I'm glad for your helpful feedback.

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Thanks for reading my blog. I love hearing about your thoughts and/or your advice. :)

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