Saturday, June 16, 2007

EGG TARTS!


Why Egg Tart?


No clue. I guess it's because it's and
1) Fairly easy to get ingredients for
2) All I needed was eggs and flour.

So I took a fairly decent-looking recipe off of "allrecipes.com" and made a few of my own tweaks and turns. I wanted to give this out to my dairy-allergic, and on a diet friends, and ya know, it would've been healthier for me as well.


INGREDIENTS

Crust:
1/2 cup confectioners' sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup margarine (or olive oil, if you prefer)
1 egg, beaten
1 dash vanilla extract (or essence)

Egg Filling
1/2 cup white sugar (or honey)
1 1/2 cups milk (whole, skim, or soy)
8 eggs, beaten (or 6 yolks and 8 egg whites)
1 dash vanilla extract
1 cup milk (whole, skim, or soy)
1/4 cup coconut milk powder (or 1/3 cup skim milk powder)

DIRECTIONS

Crust:
  1. Mix together sugar and flour. Cut in butter/margarine/oil until crumbly. Stir in the egg and vanilla until the mixture forms a dough. The dough will be kinda flaky, but still moist. . Add more marg/butter/oil if it is too dry, or more flour, if it seems greasy.
  2. Shape dough into 2 inch balls, and roll out with a rolling pin-press them into the muffin tin (or whatever else you are using.) Leave at least 1cm over the edge (the crust will shrink whem baked) and shape the edges into a triangular tip.
  3. Bake the crust for about 5-15 minutes, depending on the thickness in 450 degrees F (230 C). Do not let the edges go brown, just make sure they are solid-ish.
Filling.
  1. Combine the white sugar (or honey) and 1.5 cups water (or milk/soymilk) in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil. Cook until the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and cool to room temperature.
  2. Crack & beat eggs. Strain the eggs through a sieve, and whisk into liquid mixture.
  3. Dissolve the milk powder into 1 cup milk, and add vanilla essence (or extract)
  4. Whisk liquid ingredients all together into one bowl.
  5. Sieve 2 to 3 times to make it smooth.
  6. Decant through a sieve into the crusts.
  7. Bake for 5 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown, and the filling is puffed up a little bit.
I think the smartest thing I did when I backed the crust was putting RICE in the muffin tin above the crust dough...On the one dough that I DIDNT put rice, a small air bubble EXPANDED in the heat and lead to a crackly, broken, UGLY crust. It was depressing. I ate it though. It was good. :P