Chinese Egg Tarts With Plum Rose

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Asian

Keyword: egg, flaky, plum rose, puff pastry, tarts

Prep Time: 40

Cook Time: 26

Dough Chill Time: 4

Total Time: 5 6

Servings: 3" egg tarts

Calories: 171kcal

Also known as Hong Kong egg tarts, these homemade flaky puff pastry shells are filled with a slightly sweet, soft, creamy egg custard and are taken up a notch with a beautiful, edible, tangy plum rose. A great Mother's day treat!

Print Recipe

US Customary - Metric

Equipment

2.5" Egg Tart Molds
Wood Tart Tamper
Marble Rolling Pin

Ingredients

Flaky Puff Pastry

2½ cups all purpose flour fluffed, scooped & swept (for accurate measurement)
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup white sugar
½ cup lard (ie. Tenderflake) room temperature
9 Tablespoons ice water
½ cup cold unsalted butter sliced 0.5 cm thick

Egg Custard

1 cup evaporated milk
¾ cup water
½ cup white sugar
1 envelope vanilla sugar (or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract)
¼ teaspoon salt
2 large eggs (whole) room temperature
3 large egg yolks room temperature

Plum Roses

3 ripe plums halved, pitted and sliced thinly
48 small wooden toothpicks

Get Recipe Ingredients

Instructions

Flaky Puff Pastry

In a large mixing bowl, mix together dry ingredients (all-purpose flour, salt and sugar). Add lard to flour mix and cut lard with a dough blender or 2 butter knives until it resembles coarse crumbs.
Add 2 Tablespoons Ice water to flour and knead with your hand. Add another 2 Tablespoons and knead with your hand. Continue to repeat this method until a total of 9 Tablespoons of Ice water is kneaded into flour. Your dough should be malleable enough to shape into a ball (it should not be sticky). Wrap dough ball tightly with cling wrap and refrigerate for 2 hours (overnight is best).
Work quickly in this step (to keep dough as cold as possible). On a lightly floured surface, with a rolling pin dusted with flour, roll dough into a roughly 8 x 15 inch rectangle. Dust a little flour on the dough and rolling pin. Place 4 or 5 slices of cold butter to the center of the rolled rectangle. Fold the third bottom up and on top of the butter. Then add remaining butter slices on top of the folded dough and fold the top third down on top of the butter to the center. Your dough should resemble a smaller rectangle now. Dust rolling pin with more flour and carefully roll dough out into an 8 x 15 inch rectangle again.
At this point, you can fold the rectangle in half and roll it again, or you can repeat the fold method we did in our previous step (bottom third up to center, then top third down). The more folds you create, the flakier your shell will be. Roll dough into an 8 x 15 inch rectangle with a 1 cm thickness. If dough feels sticky, refrigerate it for 30 minutes before you continue.
With a 4" round cookie cutter press down on dough but DO NOT twist your cutter. Twisting will seal the edge and prevent a flaky shell on baking. Use a knife to lift cut-out dough disc and press it into a 3" egg tart mold with a tart tamper (or your fingers). Repeat this for the rest of the tart molds. Refrigerate excess dough (wrapped in cling wrap) until you're ready to make a second batch. Place molds on a cookie sheet for easy transfer to oven.

Egg Custard

In a small sauce pan on medium heat, stir together evaporated milk, water, white sugar, vanilla sugar and salt. Warm it for 5 minutes or just until sugar is dissolved and remove from heat (don't let it come to a boil). Set aside to cool for 10 minutes.
In a large mixing bowl, whisk together 2 eggs + 3 egg yolks. Slowly pour cooled, evaporated milk into the eggs while continuing to whisk. Place a large mesh strainer over a large measuring cup with a spout. Pour Egg custard through mesh strainer to remove air bubbles and to filter egg custard. Set aside.
Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C).

Plum Roses

Plums should be halved, pitted and sliced thinly (cut more than you need to have extras available).
Stack 2 parallel plum slices on top of each other and roll them tightly together. Insert 2 toothpicks in the shape of an X through rolled up plum slices to hold it together. Set aside and repeat this step until you have 24 roses.

Assembling the Egg Tarts

Place a plum rose into the center of your tart mold by lightly pressing the toothpick ends into the puff pastry to keep the rose in place. Repeat this step for the remaining tart molds.
Slowly pour egg custard into the puff pastry to fill 1/2 of the mold. Your pastry shell should have about 1 cm of over hang because it will shrink a bit during baking. Repeat this step for the remaining tart molds and carefully place them back on a cookie tray. Slowly move tray to the middle oven rack. Bake for 26 minutes .
Carefully remove tray from oven and allow tarts to cool for 10 minutes. Remove toothpicks from each tart then slide each egg tart out of the mold and onto a wire rack to cool for another 5 to 10 minutes. Serve while warm or refrigerate for 1 hour and enjoy cold. Dust a little icing sugar on each tart for added decor.

Video

Notes

I don't have egg tart molds, what should I use instead?

Egg tart molds are best for this recipe but if you don't have them on hand you can make tarts with a muffin pan. *Note: muffin pans are deeper than egg tart molds and will need more puff pastry & egg custard (which just means that you'll end up with less amount of tarts). Adjust baking time by adding 3 to 4 more minutes to the recommended baking time.

How far in advance should I make my dough?

To prevent the pastry from shrinking while baking, make your puff pastry dough in advance to allow it enough time to refrigerate. Make the dough a minimum 4 hours ahead to a maximum of 24 hours.

Is yellow food colour added to the egg custard?

Some bakeries or restaurants add yellow food colour to the egg custard to enhance the colour. Instead of doing that, use Omega-3 eggs since they are naturally richer in yellow/orange yolk colour than regular eggs.

Why use vanilla sugar instead of extract?

Vanilla extract is darker in colour than vanilla sugar and affects the signature yellow colour for the egg custard. If you don't have vanilla sugar available then you can still use extract (just be aware that your custard will be a shade or two darker).

Nutrition