Hong Kong Egg Tarts

Let me start this post with a disclaimer -- this is not a recipe to undertake lightly.  This is an  "I want to spend an entire afternoon in the kitchen enjoying some music, wine, and a House Hunters International marathon mumbling in the background while I role pastry dough" recipe. Make sure you block off a good four to five hours for this one, but the pay off is totally worth it if you want authentic, flaky, melt in your mouth Hong Kong style egg tarts.

I made these with my mother in law, and we used this recipe from Dreamer's Loft. Follow the link for the full details; she gives excellent and thorough instructions.  There are 3 main parts to the perfect melt in your mouth egg tart -- your filling, your oil based dough, and your water based dough.  Yes, you need two different dough sections if you want that perfect flaky crust.

Ingredients:

Oil Dough

• 100g  (about 3/4 cup) Plain Flour, sifted
• 160g (about 3/4 cup) Unsalted Butter, cubed and keep in chiller until use

Water Dough

• 20g (about 3 tablespoon) Bread Flour, sifted
• 60g (about 1/2 cup) Plain Flour, sifted
• 5g (about 1 tablespoon) Custard Powder, sifted
• 10g (about 1 teaspoon) Egg
• 40g (about 1/5 cup)  Iced Water

Filling

• 100g (about 1/2 cup) Fresh Milk
• 50g  (1/4 cup) Caster Sugar
• 2 Eggs
• 1 drop Vanilla Extract

I converted the grams to US units for you, but if you have a food scale it would be a lot better because a recipe like this requires accuracy.  And patience.  As you can see from her website there is a lot of dough folding and refrigerating and dough folding again.

Lots of folding, and folding, and folding, to get that flaky crust.  via

But then you get to the fun part:

Use a cookie cutter to cut the shells from your folded dough.  Around a 4 inch or larger diameter circular cookie cutter is ideal.  Roll your dough to about 1/3 inch thick so you have a good thick crust.

Then you can repurpose a muffin pan and press your dough into the pan until you make a thin shell. This is really the only part of this recipe I excelled at.

Then fill with your egg custard filling and bake (as you can see from her instructions, even the baking is difficult since you have to bake on several different temperatures for 10 minute increments).  Eat these warm with some freshly brewed tea or coffee for the perfect decadent afternoon snack.