Hong Kong Egg Tarts with Custard

Puff Pastry Shells

1. Walk the streets of Shanghai and you will find stalls and small cafés selling egg tarts at every step. There are especially many near metro stations, where people hurry to work and grab a snack on the way. Most often you meet shells made of shortcrust or puff pastry, and the puff pastry is often made with lard. The filled shells are baked: the custard forms a slightly darkened crust, while inside it is sweet, yellow and a little firm.

   

   For the filling you need the usual custard ingredients: low-fat milk and fresh eggs, with a little sugar. Cornstarch serves as the thickener. Butter goes between the layers of dough. For the shells we decided to use store-bought pastry. Phyllo dough gave a good result; it is widely used for baklava or Bulgarian banitsa with feta. It is sold frozen.

   

   For baking you need silicone or metal molds with cups. Muffin tins will do.

2. Thaw the phyllo dough at room temperature without unwrapping it.

3. Using pastry cutters, cut the stack of dough into circles of a size that fits the cups of the mold.

   

4. Melt the butter without letting it get hot. Brush the molds with a pastry brush.

5. Lay layers of dough into the cups one by one (3-4 layers), brushing each with butter. Press the thin dough with your fingers to form a basket with a hollow, which we will fill with egg custard later.

   

Egg Custard

1. Separate the yolks from the whites. You won’t need the whites, so use them for something else. By the way, you can whip them into meringue.

2. Put the yolks in a deep bowl and combine with the sugar. Stir with a spatula or whisk until the sugar dissolves.

3. Add the cornstarch to the mixture and stir until smooth. If the mixture is very thick, add 1-2 tbsp of the milk (from the total amount).

   

4. Put the pan of milk over medium heat. Add 1 tsp of liquid vanilla extract to the milk.

5. When the milk is noticeably warm (but not yet boiling), pour the yolk and starch mixture into it in a thin stream. Keep stirring the milk with a spatula the whole time.

6. Keep heating, stirring constantly, and the mixture will gradually thicken. This scalding process is what gave the egg and milk mixture its name, custard. Remove from the heat when the custard thickens to the consistency of thick sour cream.

   

7. The custard for egg tarts should be perfectly smooth. If any lumps remain, rub it through a sieve or blitz it with a hand blender at low speed.

Baking and Serving

1. Heat the oven to 180°C.

2. Using a spoon, fill all the pastry shells in the mold with custard, level with the edges. Keep in mind that the custard rises like a soufflé during baking. Then it settles, which is normal, since we are not making a soufflé.

   It is fair to say that in most cases egg tarts in Asia don’t have a perfect look; they are a bit shaggy.

   

3. Put the mold with the tarts in the oven. These pastries bake quickly, in up to 30 mins, and the puff pastry bakes fast too. As soon as the surface of the custard is set and begins to rise, they are ready.

4. If your oven has no grill, the custard won’t brown. In European versions the custard is meant to be smooth and fluffy. In Asian ones, if the custard hasn’t browned, egg tarts are quite often finished with a torch or grill.

   

5. Egg tarts should be served hot; that is the whole point. They go very well with cappuccino or good tea. They are also excellent on their own.