Baking Egg Tarts is NOT Easy!

Three years ago, I started blogging...

I was baking vanilla cupcakes to fund-raise for Daffodil Day. In Australia, Daffodil Day is a major fundraising event for cancer research, prevention and support services. I was doing this because I wanted to commemorate my mum who has passed away due to cancer. Every time I see daffodils blooming at Spring time, I think of my mum who loves yellow flowers.

Today, I am still baking and blogging...

I have decided not to do a bake sale for Daffodil Day anymore. Instead, I would rather purchase their merchandises as a form of donation. Having said that, I still love baking and love to bake something to remember my mum by associating her with yellow flowers at every Spring. This year, I'm thinking of baking beautiful yellow-flower-looking egg tarts for my third blogiversary... Not knowing that baking egg tart is never easy... 

Prior this bake, I have baked countless times of egg tarts but have not been yielding any good egg tarts for me until today... 

For my initial attempts, I tried using this easy and delicious egg tart recipe originated from a Chinese blogger, Heimama but didn't succeed at all baking this recipe. I have read many great reviews and seen how easy these egg tarts were made at Cook.Bake.Love and Small Small Baker and yet failed to understand why my tart pastries shrunk so much and all drowned in my egg tart fillings.

Clearly, pastry is my biggest mistake is my egg tart baking. Instead of using custard powder, I substituted it with the same amount of corn flour. For two attempts, I made the pastry with either half an egg or one egg yolk and felt that both pastries were "tense" to roll. I reckon that substituting custard powder with cornflour might be the cause of the problem as I see Lena (Frozen Wings) uses custard powder for her egg tart pastry baking too.

After numerous trial and errors, I have finally managed to bake this egg tart (ok... not this only one but two - LOL!) using Lena's recipe. Out of 12 pastries that I have made, only two were successful and the rest were drowned in their own fillings. The least is I have tasted a little success and begun to understand the concept of egg tart baking...

This is one of the two egg tarts that I have baked!

Using custard powder to make the pastry

Out of these 12 egg tart pastries that I made, only 2 worked. The rest went into the bin :(

Dissolved sugar in boiling water and waiting for it to cool before adding the eggs.

Finally that I understand! - This is the right amount of filling to fill in order to get a successful egg tart!

I have leftover pastry but sick of baking more egg tarts. So, I used it to bake Pooh and Mickey cookies instead.

My son loves these custard cookies!

Happy to see this silky filling! HURRAY!

Happy enjoying every single bite of my rare success!

Thumbs ups? - Just a little! I won't "brag" much with this tiny amount of success but I must say that it is better than nothing...

Sometimes, I wonder. Why didn't I learn to baking ten twenty years earlier? How I wish that I can bake for my mum before losing her... Sad that this is now not possible. 

Nevertheless... Happy 3rd Blogiversary to me! For my blog, all I want to say is I really appreciate baking and cooking along with all my friends that I have known from blogging. Wish that I can many years of baking and lots to learn. CHEERS!

Here's the recipe from Frozen Wings
(with my notes and slight modification in blue)

Pastry:
190g butter, softened
225g flour
75g custard powder
60g sugar
1 egg

Egg tart filling:
200g boiling water
150g sugar
5 eggs
(I used small 60g eggs)
250g milk

To make pastry: Just mix all the ingredients together into a pastry and place pastry into tarts moulds. See note...
 
Preheat oven at 200°C (or 160°C fan forced) for about 15 mins
 
Dissolve sugar in boiling water. Let mixture cool. Add egg and milk. Do not beat mixture, just stir and mix.

Strain mixture and pour into the tart mould (about 65-70% filled). Bake at 180°C (or 160°C fan forced) for 25 mins or until filling cooked.

Note: I didn't want to mark around the quantity of the pastry ingredients (especially the one egg) listed in this recipe and prefer to follow the pastry recipe to the tee. I have made the pastry in its full amount but used 2/3 of the dough to make 12 x 8 cm tart pastries. The rest was used to make about 50 Pooh and Mickey cookies. Using 2/5 of the egg tart filling recipe, I have make enough filling to fill 12 egg tarts but only two were successful.

The only two were successful because:
(1) four of these 12 pastries were placed in a freezer for 30 mins prior baking.
(2) two of these 4 were 65-70% filled with egg tart fillings whereas the other failing ones were filled with slightly more fillings.

Happy Baking
Please support me and like me at Facebook...