The Egg Tarts Project

Experiment #2 July 28, 2008

Posted by wciu in Experiments.
Tags: baking, Cooking, Dessert, egg, Egg tart, Experiment, food, pastry, Tart
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After the failure of experiment 1, I modified the recipe in a couple of ways.

1. I increased the % of lard in the recipe and decreased the % of butter – main reason for this is to get better definition of the layers.

2. I did not put in milk po wder in the oil dough – cause I wasn’t sure if it was really adding any flavor, back to basics first.

3. I removed the custard powder from the water dough, and used vanilla extract instead – This is mainly because I read the ingredients list on the custard powder, which was: Corn starch, Color Yellow, Vanilla.

4. Adjusted the moisture level on the water dough.

So the new ingredients list is:

Oil Dough:

Pastry Flour 100%

Lard 87.5%

Butter 62.5%

Water Dough:

AP Flour 100%

Egg ~30%*

Water ~35%*

Salt 1.5%

Vanilla Extract a dash(I didn’t measure this part. :p)
*For Eggs and Water, should be about 70-75% of the flour weight. You sort of have to get the right consistency.

Steps:

Steps are almost the same as experiment 1, except that the oven was set to the highest I can get mine to, which was about 290C(~550F). The tart was baked for 10 minutes at 290C, then turned down to 190C(375F) and baked for another 15 mins.

Results:

First of all, I had one problem this time around which showed up during the first 2 minutes of baking. I’ve filled the tarts to about 80% full, I also baked an empty shell just to see how it turns out. It was apparent in the first 2 minutes that the shells would shrink quite a bit as they puffed up.  Some of the tarts had the filling spilled out a bit as the shell shrunk.  So don’t fill the tarts up too full.

The tarts came out quite well, but the dough still tasted a bit undercooked, so I either have to leave it in longer on low temp or leave the high temp a bit longer.

The shell doesn’t have enough of the butter aroma, so I should increase the % of butter and see what happens.

The filling also had a problem.  It lots of minute critters on top and doesn’t look like the real egg tarts.  Not quite sure why though.  Something to figure out I guess.

Anyhow, this was much closer to what I had in Hong Kong that my last experiment.  This shows that the two stage baking approach is what needed to get a good shell.  I am one step closer to my perfect egg tart.