Apparently everyone Chinese knows what these are. Except me, up until college. A friend gave me one in junior year and it blew my mind. I hunted down a recipe that I liked and baked batch after batch, until I grew immensely sick of them. I didn't make them again in senior year and forgot about them completely until now. My roommate says she loves them so I started to crave them too, and I decided to try making them again.
The cast of characters. Preheat yo oven to 425F.
Mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/2 cup powdered sugar, and a stick of softened butter
Crack an egg and beat it silly
Fold half of the beaten egg into the crust mixture, along with a drop of vanilla extract
Take pieces of dough and shape into circles. Guess what I used to roll mah dough...
Put the dough into tart or cupcake tins. Tart tins are prettier but cupcake tins are what most people have readily available. To make your cupcake tarts look prettier, you can score the edge of the crust with a fork. I had enough dough to make 8, but ymmv.
Add 3/4 cup water and 1/3 cup sugar to a saucepan and heat until the sugar is melted. Wait to cool a little.
Add 1/2 cup evaporated milk (or regular milk or soymilk, most milks should work) and a drop of vanilla extract
You should have 1/2 a beaten egg left from before. Crack 4 more eggs into that bowl and beat it silly again. Yes there's 5 yolks in the picture, I got a little too excited and cracked one egg too many, so I adjusted the sugar and liquids accordingly.
Add the beaten eggs to the saucepan and stir well. This is the part where the instructions say to strain it to get rid of clumps. Unfortunately, I have no strainer, so I waited a bit for the clumps to float to the top, and then fished out what I could with a spoon.
Fill the crusts with filling. I used approx 1/4 cup filling per cup.
And this is what it looks like baked after 25 minutes. The middle should be a tad jiggly.
I don't think that these were a success because I might've baked them for too long. The instructions say 15-20 min at 450F, but I thought the temp was too high so I adjusted it down. I checked the tarts at 15 min and they were super jiggly. Checked again at 20, still super jiggly. Checked again at 25, realized that they're probably supposed to be jiggly in the middle, but the jiggle factor had significantly lessened by the time I saved them from the oven. I ate one warm just now and it tasted okay but the texture was a tad too firm, and it had some overcooked egg bits on the side. Once they've cooled overnight and are completely set to be judged, I'll make the final call.
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