Yin's homemade 盈盈巧手: Portuguese Egg Tarts（葡式蛋挞）

Few months ago, a Shanghai friend of mine Ariel has given me a great idea of making egg tarts using ready made pastry. She shared the egg tarts custard recipe with me.

Initially, I started off by using block sweet short crust pastry, but I wasn't good at rolling into even sheet pastry, the egg tarts pastry was too thin, I couldn't get a nice egg tarts at all. However, the custard filling tasted great though. Thankfully my two guys were not picky and ate them all, my boy Ming Ray even complimented them delicious despite the ugly looking tarts. After 2 attempts I gave up.

Only recently, when one of my computing class cooking members Vera introduced us on how to use ready rolled flaky puff sheet that prompted me to give it a try again using ready rolled pastry sheets.

Last Sunday I organised a high tea, thank god my 3rd attempts of egg tarts making didn't fail me. I managed to come out a close version of Portuguese egg tarts to serve my guests. I was delighted to get my man, my no# 1 food critics to rate them at pro standard and all the kids love them!

The following day, I finished off the pastry and fresh cream by making another batch. and brought to my computing class and pleased that my cooking members liked them too and urging me to share out the recipe.

You can find the recipe below. Well, this may not be 100% homemade version of egg tarts, as I used the ready made pastry from the store. But I know many of you will prefer using this method because is fast, simple and easy to made! Happy trying.

Egg Tarts with Ready Rolled Flaky Puff Pastry

Baked @ 23/08/2010

Ingredient:

Ready Rolled Flaky Puff Pastry

Custard Filling

Number of Egg Tarts Serve	8	12	28
1. Size 6 Egg Yolks	50g	75g	175g
Size 6 Egg Yolks(unit)	3	5	7
2. Milk	50 ml	75 ml	175 ml
3. Fresh Cream	90 ml	130 ml	300 ml
4. Castor Sugar	30g	50g	120g

Method:

1. Cut dough with a cookie cutter that is just a bit smaller than your tart tin in size. If no egg tart tin use muffin pan to replace.

2. Lightly grease the egg tart tins/muffin pan. Line dough in the middle of tart tins, one by one. Lightly press the dough with your thumbs, starting from the bottom then up to the sides. While pressing the dough, turn the tart tin clockwise/anti-clockwise in order to make an even tart shell. Trim away any excess dough.

3. Warm the milk, pour the sugar into the warm milk to dissolve. 4. Pour the cream warm milk mixture. 5. Beat the egg yolks; sieve the egg yolks into the milk mixture. 6. Fill the pastry with about 80% of the pastry.

7. Preheat oven to 200C.Bake tarts for 10-15 minutes until the edges are lightly brown.

8. Reduce the heat to 180C. Keep an eye on them. Once custard being puffed up a bit, pull the oven door open about 2 to 3 inches. This method is to avoid custard from being puffed up too high. The custard would collapse once they are cooled down otherwise.

9. Bake for another 10 to 15 minutes until the custard is cooked through or the pastry is brown. Insert a toothpick into the custard, if it stands on its own, it’s done.

The first successful batch served on Sunday 22/08/2010