TART - Chinese Egg Tarts with a French Twist

By Aemelia

Ingredients

• Sugar syrup:
• 1 sweet pastry dough (pâte sucrée)
• 200 ml water
• 100 g sugar
• 4 pandan leaves
• Custard filling:
• Sugar syrup above
• 2 eggs
• 50 g milk (original recipe calls for evaporated milk, I uses normal milk, with 1 spoon of liquid cream for an extra boost)

Details

Adapted from fangie2000.blogspot.com

Preparation

Step 1

Make the dough and chill for 15 minutes.

Press the pastry with your fingers over the base and sides of the prepared cup cake pastry tin. Prick all over with a fork and bake for 10 minutes at preheated oven of 200C.

Make sugar syrup by boiling all the ingredients together. Cover for 10 minutes and allow to cool before using. Remove the pandan leaves (it's possible to find frozen pandan leaves in Asian grocery stores, as how I do. They give the sugar syrup a tinge of very nice and essential fragrance).

For the egg custard filling, mix all ingredients together, including the sugar syrup. Use a strainer to get rid of the unwanted bits from the eggs. The mixture should be smooth and silky.

Pour the egg mixture into the already cooked pastry and bake at 160C for 20-25 minutes.

The egg tart filling should be soft and moist, yet not liquid. And yet not overcooked. So start watching the oven after 15 minutes. The egg custard should be a little puffed up when it jellies.

Original recipe asked for 1 drop of egg yellow colouring, but as I'm quite against food colourings, I omitted it and the natural colour of eggs looked great.