There are many interpretations on an egg tart. The most popular is probably the pasteis de nata, which are the Portuegese ones, featuring a thick, rich custard that is broiled on top for a creme brulee-like topping. I personally grew up on Hong Kong style egg tarts, which were a favorite of mine whenever we would go to dim sum. The pastry was flaky and buttery, and the custard is silky and unblemished. These egg tarts are more in line with the HK variation, but using brown butter in the tart shells. Traidtionally, Chinese-style “puff pastry” is made from folding together two flour-based doughs, one made with lard, and another made with water. The two doughs, by being folded together, forms layers, and when baked, you get a super flaky, buttery pastry. For my variation, I went with brown butter instead of lard since it has a rich, nutty flavor. Lard, unlike unsalted butter, has a lower moisture content(which results in less gluten development in the dough which then translates to a flakier tart shell). Brown butter is butter that is heated until the milk solids caramelize, giving it a nutty flavor. Since the butter is cooked, it has a much lower moisture content once browned, giving it a similar consistency to lard when chilled. So yes, there was some science behind why I did what I did here! For the filling, I went with a custard that used cereal milk; I was experimenting with cereal milk-flavored things and had a bunch of it leftover, so I wanted to try using that in the custard filling, which resulted in an egg tart that smelled like Frosted Flakes and butterscotch, and kind of tasted that way as well!

From a technical standpoint, the dough is quite time consuming. Originally, I was going to try doing a Chinese lamination process involving an oil(or in this case brown butter) dough and a water dough, but I got impatient with waiting for my brown butter to come to the right temperature, and wound up mixing everything together into a brown butter short crust. So it’s basically a brown butter shortbread dough with extra milk powder in it for that nutty milky flavor! While yes, I wanted those flaky, buttery puff pastry-like layers in the tart shell, it just wasn’t in the cards this time, but maybe in a future rendition, I guess! For the filling, I went with essentially a cereal milk-based creme anglaise situation that will then be baked off, almost like a flan, inside of each tart shell. When it comes to filling the tart shells, I recommend pressing them down to the bottom of whatever tin you are using(I just used a classic cupcake muffin tin), just so that the filling doesn’t leak out the bottom and bake separately from the pastry(I’ve had that happen before where the tarts were basically flan pooled at the bottom with the tart shells baked off as layer on top of the filling). Since these are tiny tarts, however, they don’t need an insane amount of time to bake fully; I could only imagine how much time a 9-inch tart shell filled with this flan-like custard would take to bake(probably close to 90 minutes). All in all, it was a nice homage to my dim sum-filled childhood, while also paying homage to my time at Milkbar!

Makes 12 tarts:
For the brown butter dough:
1 stick unsalted butter, browned and chilled
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup milk powder
1 tsp vanilla
a pinch of salt

In a bowl, mix together all of your ingredients until a dough forms. Allow the dough to rest in the refrigerator for 10 minutes. Then roll out the dough on a slightly floured surface to 1/16-inch thickness. cut out 12 5-inch disks of the dough, re-rolling the dough as necessary. Place the disks into 12 cupcake liners, pressing them against the bottom of the tins as necessary.

For the filling:
1/4 cup cornflakes
1/4 cup whole milk
12oz evaporated milk
2 egg yolks + 2 eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 tsp vanilla bean paste
a pinch of salt

In a pot, steep the cornflakes with whole milk and evaporated milk for 15 minutes. Strain out the cereal solids. In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, and salt. Temper the eggs with the warmed cereal milk and whisk everything in a pot on medium heat for 2-4 minutes, just to warm up the mixture. Pour everything through a sieve to remove any lumps or excess bubbles. Allow the mixture to cool down before divvying it up among the 12 tart shells, filling them roughly 80% the way full. Bake the tarts at 325 F for 15 minutes then 10 minutes for 300 F. Allow the tarts to fully cool before attempting to unmold.