Macau Portugese Egg Tarts

Food goes in and out of fashion, particularly in Hong Kong. Right now, scones are all the rage. Echoing Hong Kong fast-paced spirit, the food that is popular at the moment will usually have a short life span of 6 months. Usually it is like this: one shop start selling novel food (usually the food is foreign, and the shop owner imports skills and raw materials from overseas); people start talking about it and queue for it; many more imitation shops open; and interest for that food starts to wane, and ultimately, everyone has lost interest in it, and the shops are closed and the food is gone. This has happened to countless food, like potato chips doused in various sauces; Japanese cuttlefish balls; cream puffs... and Macau Portugese Egg Tart was one of them. What is different is that instead of disappearing in the Hong Kong food scene altogether, we still have KFC who are selling it and we can easily go to Macau, which is just one hour away, to have the real McCoy.

I can find Portugese Tarts here in London, but apparently they are 'real' Portugese Egg Tarts (which are sweeter and has a denser and harder custard) and I prefer the Macanese version... So I resorted to create the Macanese flavours by researching on the internet.

For the pastry, I use Delia's 'cheat' flaky pastry instead of the usual puff pastry. It is drier, less oily and crunchier. Of course, you can make your own puff pastry or buy readymade puff pastry.

Makes 12 mini Portugese Egg Tarts (I used a 12 hole bun tin, you can use ordinary Chinese tart cases, but will only yield 6)

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

1. 55g butter
2. 85g plain flour
3. pinch of salt
4. 1 1/2 tablespoon icy cold water

For the filling:

1. 60g doublecream
2. 60g full fat milk
3. 25g sugar
4. 2 egg yolks
5. 1/4 teaspoon vanilla essence

Method:

• Weigh out the butter for the pastry and wrap in a foil and put into the freezer for 45 minutes.
• Sift flour and salt into a large bowl. Take out the frozen butter and use a coarse grater to grate the butter into the bowl with the flour. Use a wooden spatula to scatter the butter among the flour. Add the icy cold water, continue stirring until the flour and butter come together. Use your hand to shape the dough into a ball. Wrap in clingfilm and rest for 30 minutes in the fridge.
• While the pastry dough is resting, make the filling by putting cream, milk and sugar in a saucepan in a pan on low heat until bubbles starts appearing. Bring it off the heat and add egg yolks and vanilla essence. Pour the mixture over a sieve and let it cool a while.
• Preheat oven to 200c and brush melted butter on the bun tray.
• When the dough finishes resting, take it out and roll it to 2mm thickness and use an appropriate round cutter to cut out 12 tarts and carefully place them on the buttered tray. Fill the tart with the custard mixtures to 2/3 full.
• Bake in the oven for 12 minutes in 200c and lower the temperature to 170c and bake for 8 further minutes. Best served while warm.