Chinese Style Egg Custard Tarts Recipe

Chinese Style Egg Custard Tarts; lovely little treats made with flaky puff pastry and a smooth, creamy egg custard filling, inspired by a Hong Kong classic! Recipe courtesy of Kelly Cletheroe of Maverick Baking.

Although China is one of the world’s great ancient powers, it still likes to take influence from us arguably less cultured folks of the Western world.

China has a traditional romantic calendar date, the Qixi or Double Seventh festival, which celebrates the universal heartache and romance of forbidden love. Nowadays, the Western celebration of Valentine’s Day is also a popular date in the Chinese calendar. However, Qixi is still a traditional and romantic celebration in Chinese culture.

Alongside the Western influence of Valentine’s Day, the age of colonialism also brought some new foods to China. The 1920s brought Portuguese custard tarts, or pasteis de Nata, to the shores of Hong Kong. The local people must have loved them, as they adopted it into a breakfast and snack tradition, egg custard tarts.

Though similar in size and ingredients, Chinese style egg custard tarts are less sweet and rich than their Portuguese counterpart, but every bit as delicious. Containing less sugar and dairy, made with a simple sugar syrup, and often containing a little more egg, nowadays these egg custard tarts are a pastry in their own right.

These tarts are a perfect little treat. Flaky pastry enveloping a silky smooth egg custard. These tarts are ideal at any time of day, and would be a great way of showing your love for someone you care about.

While traditionally, a lard-based pastry would be used to make these little treats, a ready-rolled puff pastry is used in this recipe to make life a little easier! You can whip these up in no time. Decorate your table with some fun red tableware and some pretty gold confetti from Partyrama, and you’ll have a lovely little way of celebrating the romance in your life during the Qixi festival!

Ingredients:

1 sheet of ready-rolled puff pastry
100g caster sugar
150ml warm water
70ml milk
2 eggs
1 egg yolk

Instructions:

Preheat your oven – 200 degrees Celsius for conventional ovens or 180 degrees Celsius for fan ovens. Place a large baking sheet into the oven to heat up too.
Grease a 12-hole cupcake or muffin tin, and place a 2-inch-wide strips of foil or greaseproof paper in each hole. This will make it easier to remove the tarts once they are baked.
Roll out your puff pastry sheet on a lightly floured surface.
Cut 12 circles out of the dough, large enough to just fill each muffin tin hole. You may need to re-roll and cut the pastry, this is fine!
Place each circle of pastry dough inside the holes of your muffin tin, gently pressing it into a tart-shell shape.
In a jug, stir together the sugar and warm water until the sugar has completely dissolved.
Add the eggs, egg yolk and milk to the jug and whisk thoroughly to combine.
Carefully pour the custard mixture into each of the little pastry dough tart shells, filling it to just below the rim of the pastry dough. You may not need all your custard mixture.
Bake in the preheated oven on top of the preheated baking sheet for 15 minutes, before turning the temperature down by 20 degrees and baking for a further 10-15 until the custard has just set. You can check by inserting a toothpick into the centre of a little tart, if it comes out clean, the tarts are ready!
Allow to cool slightly before eating. You can eat these tarts warm or cold.
Enjoy!

If you you enjoyed this amazing recipe, let us know on our Instagram, Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #partyramauk, and visit Partyrama to buy party supplies, balloons, decorations and lots more!