Years ago when I studied abroad in Japan, we took a field trip to Kobe for my Japan & Globalization class. One of the primary focuses of the trip was to observe the China Town in Kobe, and while we were there we sampled different kinds of food. One new food I tried was Egg Tarts. They were served mini-sized, two on a skewer. I loved them so much that when I moved to Kobe years later, I looked for them everywhere! Alas, my search was in vain. Luckily, (even more years later!) I came across a recipe for Egg Tarts so that I could try making them myself–just in time to fulfill another check off my summer bucket list.

To make the egg tarts, you only need a small collection of some everyday ingredients: powdered sugar, white sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, flour, evaporated milk and water.

You start off mixing the powdered sugar and flour together, and then you add the butter. The recipe suggests using a fork to do this, but let’s be real; your hands or a Kitchen Aid mixer will probably be much easier. I cut my butter up into chunks to help the mixing go faster.

Next you add a beaten egg and a bit of vanilla, mixing until you get a dough that’s not too moist or too dry. You can see how mine turned out in the picture above.

The recipe says to use tart molds for the dough, but a muffin tin works just as well. I used a mini muffin tin so I could make smaller tarts like the ones I had tried back in Kobe. To form the crust, I balled small amounts of dough, placed them in the tin, pressed in the middles with my thumb, and then pushed the dough up the edges with a fork to add a decorative edge.

Next, you preheat the oven and start on the filling. First you’re going to boil the sugar and water together until the sugar dissolves, and then wait for the mixture to return to room temperature. I was in a hurry, so I put the mixture in the refrigerator to get it to cool down faster. While you’re waiting for the temperature to drop, you can beat your eggs and put them through a strainer. Then, add them to the room-temp water/sugar mix before adding the condensed milk and vanilla. As you can see above, that mix gets strained one more time after it’s been whisked.

From there, you just fill up your dough with the filling (my little tartlets got about a tablespoon each, but some overflowed when I brought the pan to the oven). Since my egg tarts were smaller than normal-sized tarts, I decreased the baking time to 12 minutes, and they turned out perfectly. I sprinkled a little powdered sugar on the finished ones as a garnish, and once they were cool, indulged on like 5 of them a few.

It’s best to let these little guys cool before eating them because they taste sweeter and less eggy that way. Enjoy!

Egg Tarts

(Recipe originally posted on sassyhongkong’s blog)

Ingredients

Dough
1 cup confectioners’ sugar
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup butter
1 egg, beaten
1 dash vanilla extract

Filling

2/3 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cups water
9 eggs, beaten
1 dash vanilla extract
1 cup evaporated milk (whole milk can be substituted for evaporated milk)

12 tart molds

Directions
1.In a medium bowl, mix together the confectioners’ sugar and flour. Mix in butter with a fork until it is in small crumbs. Stir in the egg and vanilla until the mixture forms a dough. The texture should be slightly moist. Add more butter if it is too dry, or more flour, if the dough seems greasy. Shape dough into 1 1/2 inch balls, and press the balls into tart molds so that it covers the bottom, and goes up higher than the sides. Use 2 fingers to shape the edge into an A shape.

2.Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Combine the white sugar and water in a medium saucepan, and bring to a boil. Cook until the sugar is dissolved, remove from heat and cool to room temperature. Strain the eggs through a sieve (strainer), and whisk into the sugar mixture. Stir in the evaporated milk and vanilla. Strain the filling through a sieve (strainer), and fill the tart shells.

3.Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, until golden brown, and the filling is puffed up a little bit.