Egg tarts

Piping hot egg tarts
Originally uploaded by jyew.

A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do- if you miss egg tarts and no where in Ann Arbor sells a good one, you try to recreate it at home. Admittedly it doesn't look as authentic as the ones you'll find at tim-sum restaurants- and no where near as pretty- but the taste comes close enough. I was too lazy to make the crust myself so I just bought ready-made pie-crust. And instead of a tart molds, I used a muffin tray, which is why my tarts are a little deeper than the regular ones. They look almost like Portuguese-style egg tarts.

But the texture was good- all soft and wobbly. The custard isn't as sweet as I had expected which was good and the egginess isn't too overwhelming in case anyone's worried...

I'll probably have to tweak the recipe a little to get it closer to how I remember my favorite egg tart in Singapore tastes like, so my overall verdict: it isn't perfect, but for now, it'll do, and I'm happy :)

Hong Kong Style Egg Tarts
Ingredients:
* 2/3 cup white sugar
* 1 1/2 cups water
* 9 eggs, beaten
* 1 dash vanilla extract
* 1 cup canned evaporated milk
* a box of Pillsbury ready-made pie crust

Directions:
1) Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Combine the white sugar and water in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil.

2) Cook until the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

3) Use a muffin paper cup to trace and cut out pieces of pie-crust to line the muffin trays. You should get about 5-6 tart shells from each sheet of crust.

4) Strain the eggs through a sieve, and whisk into the sugar mixture. Stir in the evaporated milk and vanilla.

4) Strain the filling through a sieve again, and fill the tart shells. (Both straining processes are important coz you want a really smooth custard.)

5) Bake for 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown, and the filling is puffed up a little bit.