We've been watching Zoom cooking sessions with Michelin starred A Wong during lock down and absolutely loving it. Possibly we've been giving him a bit of grief on the side, but all in good humour! My friends and I are big fans of Chinese food but it's a fine balance between great Chinese food, and doing what it takes to be Michelin - his needs to have the bells and whistles on it, but at the same time charging £8? for a Bor Lor Bau (pineapple bun) which goes for a standard of around £2 in Chinatown bakeries is shocking. In line with normal restaurant dessert prices scarily, but it better be the best bor lor bau ever. In line with that, he served his egg tart on the show with a scoop of clotted cream on top. *shields eyes*.
Giving it a good shot here (see the picture) but just as an FYI, usually butter does not feature in chinese egg tarts, and usually the water pastry is...flour, egg and cold water. Having made them I only conclude that I prefer the recipe I had before. Whilst the pastry is easy to work with, they come out very pale and the filling is too sweet for my liking. The A Wong pastry was used throughout but the ones on the right were using an alternative egg filling. See the bottom of the page where I cook them in my usual way and despite the pastry there being scrap ends, I think they come out nicer!
Ingredients
Dough:
Oil dough:
120g shortening (or Lard)
120g butter
120g high gluten flour (double 00)
pinch of baking powder
Water pastry:
120g high gluten flour
15g shortening
1/2 egg
pinch of baking powder
Filling:
167g sugar syrup (made from 180g sugar & 270g water)
22.5g evaporated milk
2 eggs
Giving it a good shot here (see the picture) but just as an FYI, usually butter does not feature in chinese egg tarts, and usually the water pastry is...flour, egg and cold water. Having made them I only conclude that I prefer the recipe I had before. Whilst the pastry is easy to work with, they come out very pale and the filling is too sweet for my liking. The A Wong pastry was used throughout but the ones on the right were using an alternative egg filling. See the bottom of the page where I cook them in my usual way and despite the pastry there being scrap ends, I think they come out nicer!
Ingredients
Dough:
Oil dough:
120g shortening (or Lard)
120g butter
120g high gluten flour (double 00)
pinch of baking powder
Water pastry:
120g high gluten flour
15g shortening
1/2 egg
pinch of baking powder
Filling:
167g sugar syrup (made from 180g sugar & 270g water)
22.5g evaporated milk
2 eggs
- Put ingredients for each pastry in the food process and blitz.
- Flatten each into a small rectangle (think takeaway box/small lunch box) and chill.
NOTE: The oil pastry is like a spreadable consistency, this is fine. The water pastry in my case was like fine breadcrumbs which would not come together so I added water to this. A slightly naughty step, my friend tried it without and said it worked okay so it might just be different flours/days etc. See what you're comfortable with. - Flour a cloth on a worksurface (I used a silicon mat)
- Roll the water pastry (the second one with the least fat in) into something double the size of the oil pastry and enclose the oil pastry block within it.
- Hit with a rolling pin to seal and flatten and then fold using a book fold as you would with puff pastry.
- Wrap and chill.
- Repeat until 16 layers is achieved (twice more).
- Each time use the rolling pin to keep the edges squared and the mix pressed through.
- Roll the pastry out to 3mm in thickness.
- Cut using a cutter and push into the moulds/tins from the middle and up the sides.
- Do not trim the pastry edges to show the lamination.
Note: Not in his recipe, however I chose to chill the pastry in the tins as it was a warm day. I also found it easier to get into the moulds at the base once it had chilled a bit. - Boil the water and sugar together to form the syrup and cool.
Note: the amount of water is excessive to get to the resultant required 167g, in addition when I did it, it cooled into a thick gloop which I had to then dissolve into the egg mixture. The bowl the syrup was cooling in was still hot so I don't know what happened. I reverted to half mix from my usual egg tart recipe just in case. - Add the syrup to the egg and evaporated milk.
- Sieve to remove air bubbles and fill pastry cases to 80%.
Note: This is to result in a smoother custard. - Preheat the oven to 180C, non fan and bake for 15-20 minutes until pastry is golden and the middle is still wobbly.
NOTE: other recipes do suggest bottom only heat as frequently the pastry is still raw and the filling already done. The other recipe I have heats them at a whopping 220C but surprisingly it works. If the egg bubbles, that's not right and shouldn't happen with these recipes.
NOTE: I made 18 "standard dan-tat" sized tarts and had a good block of pastry left. Enough to make another six normal and a few from scraps.
Comments