Egg Tarts (Hong Kong tart shell + Portuguese custard filling)

These egg tarts have a Hong Kong style crumbly shell and a Portuguese style creamy custard filling.

I personally found that traditional Hong Kong style egg tarts’ filling is too sweet, and traditional Portuguese style egg tarts’ shell is too complicated to make. 😂

Therefore, I combined the qualities of these two types of egg tarts, and made my egg tarts delicious and easy to make!

Hong Kong Egg Tarts vs Portuguese Egg Tarts

Both Hong Kong style egg tarts and Portuguese style egg tarts are popular worldwide. Their ingredients， baking methods, tastes, and appearances are very different:

• Tart Shell

Portuguese style egg tart dough is made up of flaky, light, and thin layers of puff pastry, which will fall apart immediately in your mouth.

To make Portuguese style egg tart shell, you will have to use a baking technique called lamination: “the process of folding and rolling butter into dough over and over again to create super-thin layers” (Food & Wine, Paige Grandjean, Lamination: The Art of the Perfect Croissant), which could time-consuming. Therefore I’d prefer making Hong Kong style egg tart shells.

Hong Kong style egg tart shell is more like cookie with a strong butter flavor. Its texture is similar to pie crust, which is smoother, crumblier, and much easier to make than puff pastry.

• Tart Filling

The main ingredients for traditional Hong Kong style egg tarts’ filling are hot water, sugar, and egg, which makes the filling look golden yellow, but taste like steamed eggs.

The main ingredient for Portuguese style egg tarts’ filling is heavy whipping cream, instead of water. When the protein and fat from the cream get heated, the egg tart filling would form brown caramel spots on its top surface. This custard like filling tastes much richer and creamier than Hong Kong style egg tart filling. That’s why I always prefer making this kind of filling.

Equipment for Making Egg Tarts

• Pin Roller

• Cookie cutter (3 inch / 7.6 cm)

• Egg tart tins (2.8 inch / 7 cm)

• Oven

Ingredients for Making Egg Tarts

Filling: Portuguese style egg custard (for 10 egg tarts)

• 3 egg yolks
• 1 egg white
• 30 g sugar
• 65 g sweetened condensed milk
• 10 g milk powder (optional)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 95 g milk
• 95 g heavy whipping cream

Tart Shells: Hong Kong style pastry crust (for 10 egg tarts)

• 100 g unsalted butter – softened
• 35 g powdered sugar – sifted
• ⅛ tsp salt
• 30 g egg (about ½ egg)
• 15 g milk powder
• 160 g cake flour
• 1 tsp vanilla extract

How to Make Egg Tarts Step by Step

– Make Portuguese style egg custard filling

1. Add 3 egg yolks, 1 egg white, 30g sugar, 65g sweetened condensed milk, 10g milk powder, and 1 tsp vanilla extract to a mixing bowl. Whisk until well combined.

2. Add 95g milk and 95g heavy whipping cream to the mixing bowl, stir gently until well combined. Cover with food wrap, keep in the fridge.

– Make Hong Kong style egg tart shells

1. Add 35g sifted powdered sugar and ⅛ tsp of salt to 100g softened butter. Mix with hand mixer on medium speed for 2 minutes until the butter turns pale yellow and fluffy.

2. Add ⅓ of the egg (10g) to the butter-sugar mixture, mix with hand mixer on medium speed for about 30 seconds, until all the egg liquid has been absorbed into the butter-sugar mixture. Add another ⅓ of the egg to the butter-sugar mixture, mix with hand mixer … Repeat until all the egg has been mixed into the butter-sugar mixture.

3. Add 1 tsp of vanilla extract to the mixture, roughly mix with hand mixer on medium speed for about 5 seconds.

4. Sift in 160g cake flour and 15g milk powder to the mixture, roughly mix with a spatula until crumbly.

5. Use your hands to mix the dough until there is no dry flour. Transfer the dough to a plastic food wrap.

6. Place the dough in the center of the food wrap, fold the food wrap in half. You should get a rectangle half the size of your original food wrap. Make ½-inch-wide flaps by folding down the three open edges of the rectangle.

7. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a rectangle. Lay the rectangle dough flat on a plate, keep it in the freezer for about 30 min (or in the fridge overnight) until the dough turns hard.

8. Lay a layer of food wrap on the work surface, place the hardened egg tart dough on the food wrap, cover with another layer of food wrap over the top. Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a 4 mm thick sheet. (If the dough feels to hard to be rolled, you can rest it at room temperature for about 3 minutes. But don’t rest it for too long, otherwise it will become soft and sticky.)

9. Use a cookie cutter to cut out a disk from the dough sheet. Place the dough disk into an egg tart tin. Gently press the sides and the bottom of the egg tart shell to the tin, so that there is no air between the shell and the tin. Repeat until you use the whole sheet of the dough. (Always keep the rest of the dough sheet in the fridge while you are shaping an egg tart shell.)

– Assemble and Bake

1. Preheat the oven to 375 °F / 190 °C.

2. Take the egg custard filling out from the fridge, strain through a fine-mesh strainer.

3. Place assembled egg tart shells on a baking tray. Fill each shell 80% to 90% full with the filling. (Optionally but highly recommended to add some peach or mango cubes to each egg tart shell before filling them up.)

4. Bake at 375 °F / 190 °C for about 20 minutes until the custard filling is set and the egg tart shells turns light brown.

5. Serve warm with hot tea.

Egg Tart FAQ

1. How to store egg tarts?

• The egg tart shells

You can double or triple my egg tart shell ingredients, and freeze the egg tart shells for up to 1 year. In this way, when never you want to have egg tarts, you can simply make the liquid filling and fill it into the shells. You don’t need to defrost the shells before baking.

Specifically, after you place the egg tart shell into the tins, you can stack them then keep them into a food storage bag, keep in the freezer until use.

• Baked egg tarts

Egg tarts should be enjoyed either warm or chilled. Personally I don’t like room temperature egg tarts. The filling could tastes soggy at room temperature.

Ideally you should enjoy egg tarts right after it’s baked.

If you have any leftover egg tarts, keep them in an air tight food storage container, they should be good in the fridge (do not freeze baked egg tarts) for 4 days.

2. The recipe says 10 egg tarts, but I can only cut out 5 circles with the dough sheet

Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a 4 mm thick sheet. 

Firstly, I cut out 5 disks with my 3-inch cookie cutter. Then I kneaded the rest of the dough into a ball, wrap it with plastic wrap, and roll it into a 4 mm thick flat sheet again.

Freeze the flat dough sheet for 10 minutes until it turns hard, then cut out 3 more disks, repeat, then cut out 2 more disks.

If you find this process overly time-consuming, you can evenly divide the original dough into 10 equal portions, roll them into 10 little balls, then place and press them into the tins or muffin pans.

3. Why is my egg tart shell dough too sticky to be picked up?

This egg tart dough is basically a butter cookie dough. It’s very normal for it to be soft and sticky, especially during summer time.

Therefore we will need to either fridge or freeze the dough until it turns hard before shaping or cutting it.

When you cut it with a cookie cutter, I’d cut out and take 2 circles at a time, and keep the rest of the dough sheet in the fridge when you are pressing these two pieces of the dough into the tins.

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