Egg Tarts

So i made these egg tarts and served it for breakfast yesterday.

So when the question” Where are my favourite egg tarts?” came about on the breakfast table this morning, i knew i hit gold with this recipe.

If i had to guess, these egg tarts are more Chinese than anything else.

Made of a butter cookie like tart shell, this dessert are filled with baked custard

Soft, silky custard on top of a butter cookie.

It’s pretty amazing!

Each of these tart was baked in its individual little tartlet tin.

The crust got baked first before the custard mixture was poured in and the tarts went into the oven a second time.

Sure, it’s double the effort and double the baking time,

But it’s damn worth it!

Taken from Yochana’s Cake Delight

Ingredients:

Pate Sucree:

125 gm. Butter – chilled
60 gm. icing sugar
1/2 egg white
1 egg yolk
200 gm. plain flour
1/2 tsp. vanilla essence

Egg Custard:

280 gm. fresh milk
160 gm. sugar
3 nos. eggs
1 tsp. rum
1/2 tsp. vanilla essence

Method:

(1) For pate sucree: beat butter and icing sugar till wellmixed.
(2) Add in white and yolk and mix.
(3) Add in vanilla essence and then the flour and mix into a dough. Rest for 10 mins. Press dough into small tart moulds.
(4) Bake the tart shell till half-cooked.
(5) For egg custard, heat sugar and milk together. Once sugar dissolves, off heat.
(6) Whisk eggs and pour into the milk mixture. Do not whisk till frothy.
(7) Add in rum and vanilla essece.
(8) Sift the egg custard and pour into tart moulds and bake at 175C till egg custard sets.

Note:
Half baked should be around 10 mins at 175C. I didn’t put the timing cos everybody’s oven is different. Judge yourself and see that it’s like puff up slightly and turned white.

After pouring in the custard, bake at a lower shelf to make sure that the pastry will be cooked at 175C. Bake for about 10 mins and watch over it. If you see the custard is about to puff up into a ball, take it out from the oven immediately. Once it puffs up, the egg tart will wrinkle when it’s cooled. What you can do is to shake the tray of egg tarts and if the custard wobbles, then it a sign that it’s not cook and if it doesn’t wobble, then it’s set and you can take it out from the oven.

Chicken Katsu Oyakodon

Today’s blog entry is one that has been featured in this blog before.

Presenting a recipe a second time could only mean two things :

1.  You botched things up so badly in your first trial, that you felt the need to right your blunders in order to redeem yourself as an progressing substandard cook instead of a total schmuck. ( That’s me!)

2. The recycled recipe didn’t do too badly in its first round that you didn’t mind taking the same pictures, and describing the same scenes for the second time on your blog.

I am glad to report, that the latter applies to this situation.

The Chicken Katsu Oyako-don was first published HERE.

But instead of making the chicken katsu from scratch, I decided to go easy this morning by using frozen, ready-made chicken Karaage.

Just like frozen fish fingers, these chicken pieces have been pre-flavored and pre-breaded.

All I had to do was to drop them into hot oil and  watch as they turn golden brown.

Between the instant frozen fried chicken and the very few sauces involved made cooking such a breeze this morning.

If you are unfamiliar with Japanese sauces, here is what i used:

Yup, just these three.

Mirin, Soy Sauce and Dashi Powder.

Sautee some onion, dump in these three seasonings, dump a few beaten eggs, and voila!

That’s your oyako-don broth all ready to go!

Now, scoop some rice ( I used Japanese sushi rice) onto a bowl,

place a couple of fried chicken,

Then ladle some of that broth over the chicken pieces.

Garnish with a bit of spring onions,

And you’re good to go!

And of course, let’s not forget the chopsticks.

Dig in!

Oyako Don
Taken from Momofokufor2

Chicken Katsu-Oyakodon Recipe

Yield: 2 servings

2 cups of cooked white rice

About 8 Pieces of ready made frozen chicken karaage

1/2 cup dashi  (I used 1/2 tsp of dashi powder dissolved in 1/2 C of water)

2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 1/2 tablespoon mirin (I preferred my broth to be sweeter, and ended up dribbling about 2TBS instead of 11/2)
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon oil
3 eggs, lightly beaten

sliced green onions for garnish

2. Heat up oil to 375˚F in a frying pan. Shallow fry chicken in batches until golden brown and cooked. Drain on paper towels and set aside while you cook your onions and eggs.
3. Heat a teaspoon of oil in a sauce pan on medium-high heat. Add the onions and pan-fry until cooked and soft, but not brown. Add the dashi, soy sauce, and mirin and turn the heat to high. When the mirin mixture comes to a boil, add the eggs and turn the heat off and cover the pan so the eggs cook in the residual heat for about 3-4 minutes.
4. Fill rice bowls and place chicken pieces on top. Scoop soft omelette and dashi broth onto the chicken and rice. Garnish with green onions. Enjoy!

Yam Chiffon Cake

Here i am, dusting off the layers of dirt that has piled on this old, deserted blog.

If anyone is still reading this blog, i am sorry for the long leave of absence.

Anyways, here is me trying to make up for lost time..

Let’s get things rolling, because time’s a wasting!

Today, i made a Yam flavored Chiffon cake.

Soft, fluffy, sponge like cake, artificially flavored (whoops!) with yam paste.

Yes, yes, i should have known better than to use something artificial. But It’s been such a long time since i baked something, and i figured i shouldn’t be to ambitious.

Yam paste is actually this thick liquid that has both the yam flavor as well as its unmistakable rich shade of purple. All i did was just to tip a couple of drops of it into the batter, and voila, instant yamm-iness!

There’s the cake in its mold.

And, there is the cake out of the mold…

As you can see, i am not exactly an expert at unmolding cakes. I pretty much skinned the gorgeous golden brown top layer off this cake (Hence the brush, needed to dust off all the crumb deluge).

Love the pastel purple shade. It makes me feel all princess-y ! 🙂

Yam Chiffon Cake

Ingredients:

115 grams cake flour

25 grams sugar

75ml coconut milk (again, i used the instant one)

60 grams oil

About 5 drops of magical yam paste

5 egg yolks

7 egg whites

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp cream of tartar

100 grams sugar

Directions:

1. Sift the cake flour. Add the sugar. Whisk them together.

2. In another bowl, mix the coconut milk, oil and the magical yam paste together.

3. Slowly, stir the mixture into the flour mix. Add the egg yolks and combine. Set aside.

4. In yet another bowl, beat egg whites, salt and cream of tartar till foamy. Slowly add the sugar, beat till the egg whites form stiff but not dry peaks.

5. Gently fold the egg whites into the flour mixture

6. Pour mixture into an ungreased tube pan (my pan measures to be 20 cm on top, 15.5 cm bottom, height 10 cm).

7. Bake in a preheated oven at 160 degree Celcius (not F) for 55 minutes. Immediately invert baked cake still in pan to cool before unmolding.