Egg tarts, my favourite

I have attempted many recipes to get a good crust and soft and shiny custard by combining different recipes of crust and custard.
Finally, I found the best where I have crispy layered crust and soft and tasty egg custard, no burnt and cracked surface.
Sharing here are pictures taken from different recipes and my comments.
1st attempt:
Buttery and flaky crust, but to make the pastry dough is quite messy with hot weather.I have to place the pastry in and out of the freezer with messy hands! Egg custard is very tasty but the surface browns easily. Overall, tasty tarts but cumbersome

2nd attempt:

Tried Christine's cookie crust recipe, easy approach to make the crust dough, but I find the egg custard not as creamy and tasty as the first. 

3rd attempt:

Tried herfrozenwings recipe for flaky egg tarts. The crust was much easier to make without the need to refrigerate that often. It is not sticky thus easier to mould. But I find the egg custard not as tasty too compared to the first and second.  So I tried the 4 th attempt using the same crust pastry with different egg custard filling recipe. Read further.

4th attempt:

With the balance of some pastry dough, I used it to make 2nd batch but with different egg custard filling recipe. Tried the heimama recipe. Yes! I found it, not only tasty, soft, the surface is shiny after baked and it does not brown or crack. I do not need to lower the baking temperature at all. So the filling is successful, but the crust was not as flaky as when it was freshly made. It becomes 'biscuity' and slightly hard. Thus the flaky crust needs to be freshly prepared and use. As I normally would make extra crust dough so that I could keep in the freezer and bake a few tarts for our threesome tea time whenever I feel like it. So I am looking for another trial to see if they are perfect. Meanwhile, this combination is the best so far for freshly prepared dough. Can be a keeper recipe, I would say. 

 

Recipe: for dough, I used herfrozenwings' recipe

Water Dough
230 high protein flour, sifted
10gm custard powder, sifted
100g margarine/butter (cold)
4 tbsp castor sugar (55g)
1 egg, lightly beaten
4-5 tbsp water

Oil Dough
150g plain flour, sifted
100gm shortening

Filling:  I used heimama recipe
 140g water
55g sugar (I used granulated sugar)
1½ large eggs, beaten
40g evaporated milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)


Method:
Filling: for the custard filling:
Boil water and sugar till sugar dissolved. Let cool completely. Add beaten egg, evaporated milk and vanilla extract and mix well. Sieve 3 times. Set aside.

Water dough:  mix flour and custard powder together and rub in butter/margarine until it resembles breadcrumbs. (I used dough cutter to cut the butter into the flour till it forms like breadcrumbs). Add in the sugar, mix well and put in the egg and 4 tbsps of water, mix all with hand until it forms into a dough. Knead the dough by hand, will take several minutes to knead until it becomes a smooth dough. Cover with plastic film and leave the dough aside or put in the fridge.

Oil dough: Mix the flour and the shortening until it comes together. ( it's a little tough to form into a dough, just keep gathering the flour and rub in shortening till it forms a rough dough ). Let dough rest for 10 minutes.

 Preparing the pastry
1. Flatten water dough. Place oil dough in the center of water dough and wrap oil dough in water dough.
 2. Roll the dough flat into a rectangle shape.
 3. Fold one end of the dough up to 2/3 of the dough.
 4. Fold the other end of the dough ( remaining 1/3 )on top of the folded dough.
 5. Turn the dough 90 degree .
 6. Flatten the dough once again and roll into a rectangle shape. Repeat these steps  2 times more.

a) Put the dough in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

b) After 30 minutes, take the pastry out from the fridge, if you find it a little hard, you can thaw it for 10 minutes before shaping the tarts. Roll the pastry out to a big dough with a thickness of 0.3cm. Use a round cutter ( slightly bigger than your tart ) to cut the dough out. Place the dough onto the tart case, pressing the bottom and gently pressing the sides of the tart. Repeat until you finish lining all the tarts. Preheat the oven at 200C

c) Pour the filling about 70% full and bake for 25-30 minutes. Pls check the appropriate temp for your oven, it's really hard to advise. I baked mine at 200c for about 25minutes.