G.Sterling 基.史特凌- The Siaolangs United: tarts

This is one recipe that I wanted to try so long, as I used to be an egg tart freak, and my highest record is to eat 4 tarts at one time. Generally there are two varieties of egg tart crust. One has flaky kinda outer crust, which is called puff pastry (酥皮 in Chinese) and has an extremely crisp texture due to the several layers of butter in the doughing process. Another type is shortcrust pastry, which has a cookie-liked texture with rich butter aroma.

The type of egg tart that I love most (so far) is with puff pastry crust, and that's the type of egg tart that I can eat 4 in a row. But last Sunday when a group of us had dim sum at The Home of Dim Sum, a few of them claimed that they prefer egg tarts with shortcrust pastry more. Since the making of puff pastry is much more complicated and time-consuming than shortcrust pastry, I didn't want to trouble myself too much in this tranquil afternoon; moreover I need to satisfy most of the testers. :D

Ingredients:
For shortcrust:
3 cups of all-purpose flour
1 cup of caster sugar
1 cup of room temperatured butter (or margarine for health-conscious people)
2 eggs
½ tsp of vanilla essence

For tart filling:
2/3 cup sugar
2 ½ cup milk
10 eggs
½ tsp of vanilla essence

Yield: approx 24 tarts

Method:
For tart shell:
1. In a large mixing bowl, sift flour. Add in sugar.
2. Add in butter and mix all ingredients with a spatula till resemble bread crumbs.
3. Add in eggs and vanilla essence into the mixture. Start mixing to form a dough. If the dough is too wet, add some flour. And if it's too dry, add a little bit more of butter.
4. Take an adequate amount of dough and place it in the tart tin (I used Teflon coated non-stick muffin tray) and push the dough all the way up to the rim to form a shell. If the bottom of the shell is too thin, patch it up with more dough.

** At this stage, you can start to preheat your oven at 200°C.

For filling:
1. Make sure all the filling ingredients are in room temperature.
2. Lightly stir the eggs with a fork and try not to produce any air bubbles. Add in the dash of vanilla essence into the egg mixture.
3. In another bowl, dissolve the sugar in the milk. The amount of sugar used can be adjusted to suit your own taste. Make sure that the sugar is fully dissolved at this stage.
4. Pour the egg mixture into the milk mixture over a sieve (to create a smooth texture of egg tart later on). Stir lightly.

To assemble:
1. Pour the egg mixture into the tart shells you made earlier. (I used a measuring cup with a pour spout to pour the mixture accurately into the shell.)
2. Place the tart tins in middle rack of a preheated oven and bake for 15-20 minutes (or till golden brown) at 180°C.

Personal note:
** Pierce the middle of the tart with a metal skewer or toothpick (I used a thin-ended chopstick) and it's considered done if it comes out clean.
** If you find out that the crust is too brown but the filling is still not quite done, reduce the temperature to 150°C and cook till done.

The first batch of 6 egg tarts came out to be too thick-skinned (just like me) and hence too little egg filling (Elmo didn't complain though). Therefore the second batch onwards, I made the shell thinner and everything turned okay. The tarts are really mouth-watering when they were just out from the oven, but the crust turned soggy after kept overnight. I woke up earlier today to reheat all the tarts in the oven, the tarts became crispy but again turned soggy when I reached the office. Arghhh, and I accidentally burnt my hand! *sob sob*