Things to do with eggs. Part 2

Eggs, I just wish people sell just egg yolks or just egg whites, especially the former, as I know you can get powdered egg whites nowadays. But I am still unable to get my hands on some. The closest thing I have seen to powdered egg whites is ‘Pavlova Magic’ which comes in a cute egg shaped container but I am a sceptic to those prepared stuff as I enjoy making stuff from scratch.

I am digressing. My last post was on macaroons which only used the egg whites, so what was I going to do with the delicious but high-cholesterol egg yolks? It would be too boring if I just fried it so I decided to make egg tarts (adapted from Agnes Chang’s Delightful Snacks and Dim Sum).

I have made the egg tarts using the book recipe several times. However, she has also produced a video cd for egg tarts and that recipe is slightly different from the one in the book. So I decided to give the vcd recipe a try. But having done both, I have to say that the book recipe is much tastier and much easier to make.

Egg Tarts


Ingredients:
Water skin:
150gm plain flour
20gm custard powder
30gm icing sugar
60gm copha / vegetable shortening
2-3 tbsp water

Oil skin:
90gm plain flour
60gm copha / vegetable shortening

Filling:
3 eggs
120gm castor sugar
250ml hot water
2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp white vinegar
2 drops yellow colouring

Method:

1. Skin A: Sift all flour. Mix and knead all skin A ingredients together into a pliable dough. Do not add all the water in at once. Pour enough to make a pliable dough. Divide into 20 parts.
2. Skin B: Sift the flour. Mix and knead all skin B ingredients together into a pliable dough. Divide into 20 parts.
3. Let the dough rest for 15 minutes. Meanwhile add the sugar into the hot water for the filling and allow it to cool while preparing steps 4 to 7.
4. Wrap one portion of dough B inside one portion of dough A, and roll into a fat sausage of approx 8 - 10cm long, ensuring dough B does not spill out.
5. Lightly roll the sausage-shaped dough with a rolling pin. Then roll it up like a swiss roll.
6. Roll the mini swiss-roll dough into a ball and press into the egg tart mould.
7. Repeat steps 3 to 5 with the remaining dough.
8. Beat the eggs for the filing and combine it with the syrup prepared earlier (step 3).
9. Combine all filling ingredients and strain filling.
10. Pour filling into moulds until 3/4 full.
11. Bake in a pre-heated oven at 180 degrees Celcius for 15 - 20 minutes or until the filling is set.

Note:

• To determine if the filling is set, shake the mould and if the filling doesn't waver like liquid, then it is set.
• Another way to determine if the filling is set is when you start seeing the filling starting to puff upwards, remove the tart from the oven immedietely otherwise when your filling rises too high, it may pop and when it deflates, the egg tart will not look too pretty.
• If, in step 1, you have added all the water and the skin is too wet and sticky, add in more flour and continue to knead. The skin dough should not be sticky when touched.