does someone have a good recipe for egg pie or egg tarts?  much appreciated if you could share it with me…

Do you mean like a quiche or a stratta?

or you mean flan or creme caramel?

Or do you mean something like Chinese- or Hong Kong-style egg tarts?

Elicia from Malaysia shared a recipe for Egg Tartlets on Nov14,2006 in Rose’s blog:

http://www.realbakingwithrose.com/2006/03/why_is_butter_better_for_bakin.html

I tried Elicia’s recipe and it is the closest to the genuine thing that I have come across. Thanks for the recipe.

Elicia, do you have any tips cutting and fitting the pastry? From the instructions, I gather you rolled out the pastry and cut it into circles. When I did this they kept shrinking and I had a job pressing and stretching them to fit the liner. Did you encounter this problem? I rolled the pastry to 1/8 inch thick but it would not stay this thin. In the end, the tarts were beautiful to eat though not perfect in looks because of the pastry problem.

The custard was perfect, though I used less sugar to suit my taste buds.

Any comments would be appreciated.

I’ve never worked with this particular type of dough, but my experience with American pie dough is that when the dough is too elastic and “shrinks back,” it’s because you’ve developed the gluten in the flour too much.

There are several ways of dealing with this:

1) Use a lower-gluten flour, so there’s less gluten to develop.
2) Use the smallest amount of water or liquid possible (gluten only develops in the presence of moisture and agitation).
3) Coat the flour grains with fat before you mix in the liquid.
4) Handle the dough very gently to avoid developing the gluten.
5) Let the dough rest in a cool place for several hours, so the gluten relaxes.

With pie dough, I use all of these except #2. (I don’t like my dough to be too dry and crumbly.)

I’m not sure which of these would work best with your particular recipe—maybe someone else can help with that!

Barbara A

Thanks for the input. By low gluten flour do you mean low protein flour such as cake flour?
I closely followed Rose’s instructions for making puff pastry and let the dough rest in the fridge in between folds with a total of 5 folds rather than her recommended 7, so I don’t know whether I handled the dough too much. Maybe I handled it too heavily. Will take note of your suggestions and try again.

I was thinking of pastry flour—when making piecrust I usually use a mixture of all-purpose flour and pastry flour. Pastry flour is just a lower-gluten version of all-purpose, unlike cake flour which is very finely ground and bleached.

I hear that it’s hard to find pastry flour in some areas, though. I get mine at a local natural foods co-op. The type they sell there is so “soft” (low-gluten) that I rarely use it alone—I usually blend it with varying amounts of all-purpose flour.

In puff pastry dough,  I think you need at least a bit of gluten development in the dough layers or they don’t hold together and form those nice thin crisp sheets. Still, it sounds to me like you had too much gluten development. Maybe you could try using just a little bit of pastry flour, or switching to a different brand of all-purpose flour that is “softer.”

What flour did you use, by the way?

In Australia there is a brand called Anchor which manufactures a flour of low protein content which they describe as Cake & Pastry Flour. It has a protein content similar to American cake flour. This was the one I used for the “oil dough”. For the “water dough” I used an Italian 00 all purpose unbleached flour.

This was my first time making any sort of puff pastry so you can imagine I was a bit ‘all thumbs’. However, the layers turned out thin and crisp. My main problem was with the shrinking and keeping them large enough to fit the pasty cup. I’ll try different brands as you suggest and maybe even try microwaving the unbleached flour (bleached flour not available here).

I doubt that microwaving would be much help—I think it is mostly good for helping to give the right texture to cakes. (I might be wrong—somebody please correct me if I am!)

My suggestion would be to change the flour for the “water dough” so it is “softer”—try a mixture with maybe 3/4 or 2/3 being the Italian all-purpose, and the rest being the softer cake and pastry flour. See what happens! Baking experiments are fun!

I’ve been using this method to improve my pie doughs—with some experiments and note-taking, I’ve settled on just the right proportions for the two recipes I use the most. (They were pretty good to start with, now they turn out “just right.”)

I will definitely follow your lead on the flours and forget about microwaving. Thanks for your help

Hi geejay

Elicia actually specifies to use all cake flour in the oil dough.  Probably the all-AP flour you used in the oil dough has added to the gluten content. 

I made these tarts today (did the pastry yesterday) with great results!  I’m so pleased.  I had the same problem with shrinking pastry.  Letting it rest for at least 30 minutes or more after rolling it out, helps a lot.

Here’s another custard tart recipe you may want to try:
http://www.leitesculinaria.com/recipes/port/pasteis_belem.html

These tarts originated in Lisbon and some version of them appears wherever the Portuguese travelled in the world through the centuries. I tasted them in Mozambique and couldn’t rest until I had approximated their delicious taste and texture. Leite’s recipe comes close. I had to tweak it somewhat. As I recall, his custard was far too sweet compared with my memories of the original, and his yield was off if you really did fill the pastry cups 3/4s full. The pastry was odd but easy to work with and yummy!