The Food Site

After torturing you for three straight days with my cabbage recipes, I feel so bad that I think I better share with you the egg tarts recipe I tried out for the very first time not so long ago.

Egg tarts have to be one of my favourite non-chocolate desserts or snacks or whatever category you wanna place them in. To me, egg tarts are probably the best pastry ever made…well, except for pineapple rolls. And cheesecake. And…err…never mind. Let’s just say, I absolutely love egg tarts and have been hankering to try making them myself.

So, I did a search and found the Hong Kong Style Egg Tarts recipe from allrecipes.com. Please don’t laugh at my not-so-perfect pastries. It is my first time after all. This is going to be a rather long post so I won’t rattle on so. Here’s the recipe:

Egg Tarts Recipe

Ingredients

For the pastry:

1 cup icing sugar

1 cup butter

3 cups flour

1 egg, beaten

a dash of vanilla essence

For the custard:

2/3 cup white sugar

1 1/2 cups water

9 eggs beaten

dash of vanilla essence

1 cup fresh milk

Equipment

12 egg tart moulds

Instructions

1. Grease your egg tart moulds very, very lightly.But you don’t have to if you don’t want to because these moulds are non-stick (or so I was told when I bought it from the baking supply shop).

2. Sift the icing sugar and the flour into a mixing bowl.

3. Add the butter and rub it into the mixture until you get crumbs.

4. In a bowl, lightly beat the egg and then add it to the mixture and start kneading till you get soft, pliable dough.

5. You can start forming small balls and then place them on the moulds and start forming the base using your fingers to push the dough into the mould.

Egg Tart Recipe: Making the custard

6. Pour the water into a pan and heat it up and add the sugar. Bring to a boil and let the sugar dissolve. Then remove from heat and cool completely. (So that you don’t cook the eggs when you add this to the egg.

7. Place all the eggs in a bowl and beat lightly. Sieve it into another bowl. Add in the milk and vanilla. Stir and mix well.Add into sugar and water mixture. Stir till well combined.

8. You will need to pass it through a sieve again or like me, use a smaller sieve and pour it into the prepared dough.

9. Preheat the oven to 160C. Then you bake the tarts for about 30 minutes or until the egg custard is cooked and not watery anymore.

Did I mention that I simply love egg tarts? Especially when it’s hot from the oven. Yum.

If there’s anything I love more than chocolate, it’s peanut butter AND chocolate. So, just a few days after even the crumbs of the double chocolate chip cookies are gone, I made another type of cookies.

This time, I tried out the chocolate filled double delight peanut butter cookies recipe I found over at Baking Bites. I did some minor changes and the result is this…

These cookies are so darn good and rich, I can only eat one at a time! So, here’s the recipe:

Chocolate Filled Double Peanut Butter Cookies

Ingredients

Cookie dough

1 1/3 cups flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)

1/2 tsp salt

6 tbsp butter, soften

1/2 cup brown sugar

4 tbsp palm sugar (gula melaka)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

18 tbsp peanut butter

Topping

1/4 cup almond nibs

2 tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon powder

2 tbsp melon seeds

Filling

6 tbsp peanut butter

2 tbsp cocoa powder

3 tbsp icing sugar

3 tbsp granulated sugar

4 tbsp finely chopped dark chocolate

Instructions

For the cookie dough:

1. Sift flour, baking soda and salt together.

Note: I added some palm sugar because it has a special fragrant flavour you can’t get from any other sugar. If you don’t have it, you can always use white sugar (about 1/2 cup) instead.

5. Beat the mixture till well combined.

7. A smooth dough will form so spoon it onto a piece of parchment paper.

9. Refrigerate it for about 2 hours or till the dough harden.

Now, on to the cookie fillings:

11. Mix it around and you will get a smooth paste.

Finally, remove the dough from the fridge…

14. Flatten the dough on your palm, place the ball of filling in the centre and wrap the dough around the filling. Make sure the filling is completely covered. You can shape it into a small ball.

15.Place the toppings in a bowl and mix it around.

16. Then, roll the ball of dough in the bowl of toppings.

Make sure you leave more space around each ball as you will need to flatten it with the bottom of a glass or any cup with a flat bottom.

Also, preheat the oven to 190C (375F).Finally, bake the cookies for about 10 minutes or until it turns a golden brown.

Let it cool for a couple of minutes on the tray before moving the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Let me tell you, these are so good,  all this trouble is really worth it. I was contemplating adding chocolate chips as the toppings but in the end, didn’t. Now, I know it would go great with it. Maybe next time…