Cantonese Egg Tarts

"Are we making anything today?"  MyGirl asked me.

"We could,"  I replied.  "What do you want to make?"  

"Egg tarts,"  she recommended.

I knew we had flour, butter, sugar, milk and eggs so I was quite confident we'd be able to whip up some egg tarts.  All we needed was a recipe we could work with.  

"Done.  Go look for a recipe."

The last batch of egg tarts we made required puff pastry which we didn't have.  I figured making the pastry from scratch wouldn't be too difficult.

MyGirl showed me a recipe but when we got to part indicating how many eggs were needed, we both shook our heads.  (The recipe required NINE eggs.)  

I let MyGirl go through some more recipes.  When she had found one she wanted to try, I told her to copy it down so that we could refer to it as we baked.   

The recipe called for evaporated milk which we don't normally have in our pantry.  I had to re-check whether we could substitute regular milk before we could proceed.  (Seems evaporated milk has less water, since it has been 'evaporated' thus the name.)  Fortunately the recipe called for the sugar to be dissolved in hot water, then for the whisked egg and evaporated milk to be added.  I figured this meant I could just substitute regular milk for the 'water plus evaporated milk' combination. 

I re-read the recipe and asked MyGirl if she had copied it down wrong because it said that we were to  'Cut dough with a cookie cutter that is just a bit smaller than your tart tin in size'.  

"Shouldn't we cut dough with a cookie cutter that is BIGGER than our muffin pan hole?"  I asked MyGirl.

"No," she insisted, "it says 'smaller'.  I think it is right."

I wasn't convinced so we decided that we'd do half the dough her way (smaller than the muffin pan hole) and the other half my way (bigger than the muffin pan hole).  

After she had made the pastry dough, she divided it in half and worked on one muffin pan.  She made six big ones her way and I made six big ones my way.  With the left-over scraps, we made ten smaller ones using a mini-muffin pan (six small ones from her scraps and four from mine).

They turned out beautifully, if I may say so myself except for two of the tiny ones which got stuck to the pan and crumbled away.   

The big ones are in the back.  Can you see the difference in the thickness of the crust?   

 

The ones on the left were from my batch while the ones on the right were from MyGirl's. 

Since the tarts were distinctively different,  I asked MyGirl to allocate the tarts already so that it would be fair.  We each got an sample from each of the batches  -- a big one from MyGirl's, a big one from mine, a small one from MyGirl's and a small one from mine.  (MacGyver and I each had a bonus tart since there were a dozen big ones). 

She sorted the tarts and made labels for each person.  Then she made a sign to make sure people knew they   had their OWN allocation.

At them moment, I have stashed my share in the refrigerator and these are the only ones left on the counter.

In other words, the recipe is a keeper.