Chinese Egg Tart

If you've ever had dim sum, you've encountered these delicious egg tarts with a flaky crust and a subtly sweet custard filling. These personal tarts are not as difficult to make as you'd think. There are many recipes out there, but this one I found to be the best: https://www.196flavors.com/china-egg-tart-dan-tat/. I liked this recipe because it required you to fold the crust creating beautiful crisp layers. Follow along below to make some of your own! Please note that I doubled the recipe for the photos, but the recipe below is the original.

Ingredients (All at room temperature except the cold water)

• 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
• 0.5 cup of evaporated milk 
• 1.5 cups all purpose flour
• 14 tablespoons of unsalted butter (1.75 sticks) cut into small cubes
• A pinch of salt
• 0.5 cups of granulated white sugar mixed with 1 cup of hot water
• 1 tablespoon of granulated white sugar
• 2 tablespoons of cold water
• 3 large eggs

1. Combine the flour, salt, and 1 tablespoon of sugar in a large bowl. Add the butter and work in the flour with a fork until the contents of the bowl resembles wet sand. You should be able to squeeze the contents to form a clump. I had to start using my hands since it took forever.

2. Disperse the cold water around the dough and mix with a fork until it comes together. It is okay to add a few more drops of water if it is not coming together, but only add a few drops at a time. Too much water can be the death of a good pastry crust.

 3. Once combined, cover and refrigerate for 20 minutes. Try to do the next few steps relatively quickly as the more the dough is worked with, the stickier it will get. That being said, the dough is very forgiving.

 4. Flour your working surface (I used a giant wooden cutting board). Flour your rolling pin. Put the chilled dough on top and roll it out to 8" by 20". Feel free to dust extra flour because the dough will be sticky at first.

5. You will now do a letter turn which resembles folding a piece of paper into thirds so it fits in an envelope. Split the dough in your mind into three sections. Fold the left section onto the middle section.

6. Fold the right section onto the middle section. Rotate the rectangle 90 degrees then dust the surface with flour.

7. Roll out the dough again repeating steps 5 and 6. It will be much easier this time. Wrap the dough and chill it in the refrigerate for 30 minutes.

8. The dough resting will give you plenty of time to make the custard base. Whisk the eggs and milk together. Add the sugar water mixture and vanilla and whisk some more. Also preheat the oven to 400 degree Fahrenheit.

9.Strain the custard base through a sieve to get out all the air bubbles.

10. Roll out the chilled dough onto a floured surface to about 0.25" thick. Cut the dough into circles that are slightly larger than the molds you are using. Speaking of molds, I used standard size silicon muffin molds and fancy flower molds and they both worked great. A 3.5" cutter cut the perfect size circles for both molds.

11. If you get 12 rounds on your first round, great! If you are like the rest of use, you'll have to recombine the the scrapes to make 2-3 more rounds for a total of 12 rounds. Feel free to bake off the left over dough, it is delicious on its own, but it will be done before the tarts. Put the circles of dough in the molds. Even though I pricked the dough in the pictures, don't!!!! It will lead to leakage. Feel free to press the dough so it fits snug in the molds. Make sure there are no holes.

12. If you have a measuring cup or a bowl with a spout, put the custard base in that. Fill the molds with your custard so it comes almost to the top, but leave a little gap. This will prevent the custard from spilling over and wetting the crust. Stick them in the oven for 15 minutes.

13. Bring your oven down to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Bake for another 12 minutes. After 12 minutes are up, move the pan a little bit to check how jiggly the custard is. If it is really jiggling, bake for another 5 minutes. I had to bake for an extra 10 minutes. It is done if it only jiggles a little bit and feels mostly dry on top. Turn off the oven and leave the door up for 5 minutes. Take the tarts out of the oven and let them cool. They come out of the molds pretty easily.

Enjoy!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream Sandwiches

Chocolate and peanut butter are meant to be together. I found two different recipes that are great on their own, but really balance each other out together. It might be too much to cook them all on the same day, but if you spread the cooking process across multiple days, it becomes a lot more feasible. I did the the following:

Day 1-Cooked the chocolate crumbs

Day 2-Made the cookie dough

Day 3-Made the ice cream base

Day 4-Churned the ice cream

Day 5-Baked the cookies

Day 6-Delivered and enjoyed

Day 1 Cooked the Chocolate Crumbs

I followed the chocolate-chocolate cookie recipe from the Momofuku Milkbar Cookbook. I cannot give you the exact recipe out of respect for Christina Tosi, but she posted another of her cookie recipes that gives you a rough idea and I'll show you the process. I even included some videos. Scroll down to the compost cookie recipe.

I cooked the chocolate crumbs for a banana cream pie and just doubled the recipe to yield enough for the cookies.

The chocolate crumbs are the easiest to make. 

1. Preheat the oven

1. Combine all purpose flour, salt, sugar, good cocoa powder (Dutch Process for the win), and cornstarch in a stand mixer. Stir on low. 

2. Add melted unsalted butter while the mixer is still on until crumbles form. 

3. Put the crumbles on a Silpat or parchment paper line baking sheet. Make sure the crumbles are well distributed so that hot air can circulate.

4. Bake for at least 20 minutes. When the crumbles are only a little bit moist, they are done baking. They'll dry out as they cool off.

 Day 2-Made the Cookie Dough

1. Prepare the ingredients this includes:

• Putting room temperature unsalted butter, sugar, and glucose in the stand mixer bowl. Do not make this recipe without the glucose. Glucose is sugar brought up to a very high temperature and then cooled forming the stickiest substance imaginable. The glucose will make the cookies teeth satisfyingly chewy. 
• Melted chocolate
• Egg and vanilla
• Flour, cocoa powder (Dutch processed of course), baking powder, and baking soda, and salt whisked in a bowl
• The chocolate crumbs from day one

 

2. Mix the contents of the stand mixer until the butter is creamed.

3. Add in the egg, vanilla, and melted chocolate

4. Add in the dry ingredients gradually, but not too slow. You want to minimize the amount of time that your mixer is on once the dry ingredients are in.

 5. Add in the chocolate crumbs with the mixer on the lowest setting.

6. Shape the cookie dough with a small ice cream scoop onto a lined cookie sheet. Cover with plastic wrap and aluminum foil. Freeze or refrigerate for at least an hour. If you freeze them, you can can consolidate them into a ziploc bag to save room. Do not bake these cookies while they are warm!!

Day 3-Made the Ice Cream Base

The peanut butter ice cream recipe is available here: http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Peanut-Butter-Swirl-Ice-Cream- Please note that I doubled the recipe since, well... my coworkers are hungry.

1. Get your ingredients ready, this includes:

• 1 cup of milk (I use whatever type I have, the cream's fat content will trump the milk) in a large sauce pan
• 3 egg yolks and 0.75 of a cup of white sugar in a large bowl
• 1 cup of smooth peanut butter in two half cup portions
• 1.5 cups of cream 
• 2 teaspoons of vanilla
• 0.5 of a cup of salted roasted peanuts chopped

2. Heat the milk until it is steaming, stir with a spoon scrapping the bottom just in case the milk cooks on the bottom.

 3. Stir the egg yolks and sugar together with a whisk. At first the mixture will be yellow and grainy. After you whisk for a while, the mixture will soften both in texture and color.

4. Slowly stir in the hot milk to temper the eggs, bringing their temperature up gradually preventing them from scrambling. Who wants scrambled eggs in their ice cream?

5. Fully combine the milk and egg mixture until it is all incorporated. Put the mixture back into the saucepan and cook on medium, constantly stirring with a wooden spoon. Cook until the mixture thickens and can coat the back of the spoon.

6. Stir in half a cup of peanut butter until combined.

7. Pour the mixture through a fine sieve to get out any egg bits that did scramble.

8. Incorporate in the vanilla and cream.

8. If you are using the type of ice cream maker that requires you to freeze the bowl, you'll have to let the ice cream base cool in the fridge for a couple of hours. If you have one with a built-in compressor, you can churn right away. Even though I have the latter, I wanted to space out the cooking process and opted to cover the base with plastic wrap in the refrigerator overnight.

Day 4-Churned the Ice Cream

1. Follow the ice cream maker's instructions on how to churn ice cream.

2. Just before the ice cream is done churnning, add in the chopped peanuts.

3. After the ice cream is churned, fold in the rest of the peanut butter.

3. Wrap the top of the ice cream container with plastic wrap to ensure freshness.

Day 5-Baked the Cookies

1.  Bake the cookies directly from frozen. Be sure not to over bake which is difficult when the cookies are so dark. My rule of thumb is if the very edges are starting to firm up, but the middle is still soft, take the cookies out and let them cool. They will firm up when they cool on a cooling rack.

Day 6-Delivered and Enjoyed

Enough said, these will go fast.

Meringue à Trois (Gluten free option)

Meringue à Trois

You all may have noticed that I haven't posted here in a while. That is because I created a new blog (https://getoffyourbuttandcook.net/) that is focused on healthy eating. I didn't think this creation fit in, though it isn't the most unhealthy dessert in the world. 

I am really proud of this recipe since it it one of my truly unique creations. You won't find this creation anywhere else. I originally called it Ménage à trois, but I opted for a more PG title when I starting writing this post. I experimented several times making this dessert. A meringue a trois has three crunch components. A baked phyllo dough cup, pomegranate meringue, and tempered dark chocolate. These components are not only crunchy, they each have a different kind of crunch. The phyllo dough has a brittle snap. The meringue is a little softer and dissolves once it hits the tongue. The tempered dark chocolate melts a little when you bite into it without dissolving. All in all, it is a party in your mouth. Believe it our not, this recipe can easily be modified to make it gluten free.

The full recipe makes about 24 servings.

Phyllo Dough Cup

Ingredients

•  Half a roll of phyllo dough that is thawed according to the instructions (gluten free phyllo dough if you want to make this gluten free. There are a few recipes out there. You can use this product, though it is puff pastry which isn't as crunchy. If you are using the GF puff pastry, make sure it is rolled very thin )
• Melted butter (as much as needed)

1. First get out a mini muffin tin and spray it with non-stick spray and preheat the oven according to the phyllo dough/ puff pastry box.

2. Use a pizza cutter to cut  4 inch length and width squares out of the phyllo dough. Make sure you cover the dough with a damp towel when you aren't using it. It will dry out and become too brittle to use if you don't cover it

3. Carefully place a single square in each muffin tin hole and quickly brush with a little bit of melted butter. I tend to do a few at a time to minimize the time the dough is exposed without a coat of butter. Brittle phyllo dough is a pain to work with. Well thawed and moist phyllo dough is easy to work with.

4. Repeat 2 times. If you are using GF puff pastry, you only need one layer. Also if you are using gf puff pastry, prick the dough all around with a fork to ensure that the dough does not puff up while baking. I haven't tried using puff pastry, but I am assuming this will work.

5. Bake for about 15 minutes until golden brown.

With the extra phyllo dough, I cut it up the same way and put some Parmesan cheese and garlic powder inside and baked it with the other empty shells. They came out great, just make sure you are generous with the cheese because it does shrink down quite a bit when you bake it.

Pomegranate Meringue

While the phyllo dough is prebaking, you'll have time to make the meringue. I used Christina Tosi's Fruity-Pebble Meringue recipe as a base and modified it.

Ingredients:

• 4 room temperature egg whites from large eggs (absolutely no egg yolks)
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 1.5 cups of powdered sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon of cream of tarter
• 2-4 tablespoons of pomegranate molasses (depending on how pomegranatey and tart you want it. I started with 1 tablespoon, then 2, then 4. Maybe 3 is just right?)

1. Preheat your oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Whip the egg whites alone in a stand mixture until it becomes really fluffy with bubbles which should take about 2 minutes.

3. Add in the salt and cream of tarter. Whip for one minute more so the salt and cream of tarter dissolve.

 

4. Add in the sugar and beat for about 3-5 minutes until soft peaks form. Add the pomegranate molasses.

5. Whip until stiff peaks form.

6. Using a piping bag with a thick star tip, pipe in meringue.

7. Bake for 3 hours and let them cool completely in the pan.

Tempered Dark Chocolate

You can just use regular melted dark chocolate, however tempering chocolate leads to a more shiny/ crunchy product. Tempering can be very intimidating, but this video shows you a very easy way to do it (Thank you Bigger Bolder Baking!). You can also use milk chocolate as wepp.

• 4 ounces of chocolate of your choice (do not use chocolate chips)

1. Cut the chocolate finely with a knife and put 1 ounce of the cut chocolate in the fridge.

2. With the rest of the chocolate, melt it slowly in the microwave. Make sure you stir gently after each microwave interval. The final temperature of the chocolate should be between 114-118 degrees Fahrenheit if you are using dark chocolate.

3. Mix in a little bit of the the chocolate from the fridge at a time until the chocolate reaches a temperature of 88-89 degrees Fahrenheit if you are using dark chocolate.

4. Drizzle the chocolate on top of the Meringue à Trois. Do not be tempted to pour a lot of chocolate on top. The chocolate will overwhelm the taste, so a little goes a long way. I have pre-washed and dried strawberries on hand to use the leftover chocolate with.

Please let me know your experience cooking these.