Egg Custard Tart

I've been looking for the perfect egg custard tart recipe for over a month now. I haven't found one...yet...but I know I will. However, I did run into one I deemed as close as possible to the egg custard tarts I have in hong kong bakeries. The crust is crumbly-flaky, but not puff pastry flaky. It is almost perfect!

Recipe from A Tale of Crumbs

"Water" dough

200g All purpose flour

  50g Cake flour

1-1.5tsp double action baking powder (i could only get single action baking powder)

30g sugar (tweak according to your sweet tooth)

  80g Lard

125ml Ice Cold water

Oil dough

100g Cake flour (sift this!)

0.5 tsp double action baking powder

125g Lard

Egg custard filling

80g white sugar

280ml Cold water

4 large eggs

40ml full cream milk

40ml cream

For the Water dough,

1. Mix the flours, baking powder and fine sugar.

2. Sift this resulting mixture into a clean bowl and cut in the lard.

3. Mix in iced water (or pulse using a food processor) until the resulting dough forms into a ball. 

4. Wrap in plastic film and let the dough relax in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour.

For the Oil dough

5. Add the baking powder into the cake flour and mix throughly.

6. Sift the flour into a cold clean bowl.

7. Cut in the lard into the flour and mix till it forms into a clean ball of uniform paste. (you can use a food processor for this.)

8. The paste should be close to spreading consistency but not fluid-like.

9. Place the oil dough ball in the center of the water dough circle and gently wrap up from the sides till its sealed without air pockets.

10. Lightly flour your kitchen tabletop and roll out the dough into a rectangle.

11. Now you can proceed with rolling and folding it like classic french puff pastry. (at least 6 turns with resting / chilling periods)

12. Make 1 extra turn at the end.

13. Measure the longest diameter of your tart mold and cut with a round cookie cutter larger than the mold by a couple of millimeters.

14. Gently and carefully line your tart mold with the cut out dough without over pressing the laminated layers. 

15. The dough pastry may look as if it was too much for the tart mold, but when it bakes, the sides will creep down, so make allowance for that.

16. Poke some holes with a fork in the base of the dough.

17. Preheat your over to 200 degrees C.

For the Egg custard filling,

18. Boil water with sugar, till all melted and keep aside till cool.

19. Crack the eggs, add in milk and cream and gently stir with a whisk until well mixed. (Try not to introduce too much bubbles)

20. Add in the cooled sugar water and gently mix well.

21. Sift the entire mixture through the finest sieve you can get your hands on and into a bowl/coffee pitcher.

22. Lower the temperature of your oven to 160 degrees C and place the tart shells onto a baking sheet in the middle layer of the oven.

23. Prebake these shells for about 10minutes or till almost ready. (constantly check through the glass window of your oven to make sure they are NOT already browned!!!)

24. Carefully remove from the oven and let the shells cool down for about 10-15minutes.

25. Lower the oven temperature to 120 degrees C.

25. Using the coffee pitcher, carefully pour in the egg custard mixture till about 2-3mm from the brim of each tart. 

26. Carefully return these filled tarts to the middle layer of the oven and bake till the custard starts setting.  (Typically, after an initial 5-10 minutes of baking, i will open the door of the oven every 5 minutes to tap/gently shake the baking sheet and observe if the egg custard remains wobbly.)

27. The texture point to stop is to first look out for the egg custard to be that between creme brulee and pudding like.

28. Remove from the oven and let it cool on a cooling rack. (you should observe a nice sheen/gloss on the custard surface)

29. Start munching already!!!