Egg Tarts (Mini Egg Custard Tarts)

When I lived in Hong Kong, these egg tarts were one of my favorites, they were my breakfast, lunch or afternoon snack.  You will find these tarts on the dim sum menu if you go to a Chinese dim sum restaurant.  Traditionally, the crust is made with lard (no kidding, you know how unhealthy it is!).  With the homemade egg tarts, lard can be substituted for butter.

Recipe was dapted from Christine Ho’s blog – Cantonese Egg Tarts recipe.  I slightly adjusted the sugar amount from the original recipe to suit my taste.

Ingredients of Crust:

225g	All purpose flour
110g	Butter
40g	Icing sugar
1	Egg (whisked)
a dash	Vanilla Extract

Ingredients of Custard:

3	Eggs
90g	Caster sugar
225g	Hot water
85g	Evaporated milk
1/2 tsp	Vanilla extract

Method (making crust):

1. Place softened butter and sugar in mixer bowl, attach bowl and flat beater, turn to medium speed and beat until the mixture is smooth.
2. Add in whisked egg and vanilla extract, beat over low speed.
3. Sift in flour in two batches, turn speed to “stir” to mix, scrape down the sides with a spatula, then sift in the remaining flour, turn speed to stir to mix well.
4. Take out a piece of dough (size of a quarter) and put it in the middle of the tart tin.  Work from the center, push the dough outward with your thumb, trim away any excess dough.  Or you can roll out the dough and use cookie cutter to cut a circle.

Method (making custard):

1. Add sugar into hot water (not boiling water), mix until completely dissolved.
2. In a medium bowl, mix whisked egg and evaporated milk, pour in sugar water.
3. Sift egg mixture with a strainer/sifter (do not skip this step as it will isolate stringy white pieces in egg white or foam).   Pour egg mixture into each tart shell.

Method (baking tarts):

1. Preheat oven to 400 ◦F.  Position rack in lower third of oven. Bake tarts for 10 to 15 minutes until the edges are lightly brown.   Move the baking sheet to the second rack counting from the top.
2. Reduce the heat to 350 ◦F, once the custard being puffed up a bit, pull the oven door open about 2 to 3 inches. Bake for another 10 to 15 minutes until the custard is cooked through.  To check doneness of the custards, insert a toothpick into the center of the custard.  It’s cooked if the toothpick is clean.