Recipe - Quick and Easy Egg Tarts

FOR those of you who have been following this column regularly, I am sure you know by now that I am always thinking of shortcuts for recipes to my favourite dishes, or how to use what is easily available at the market or in my pantry at home.
This saves me time and reduces the hassle of preparing food that require a long list of ingredients or complicated cooking methods.
Today’s recipe again ­reflects the Simple Housewife’s cooking ­philosophy, if one may call it such.
Egg tarts are one of my favourite purchases when I visit a certain bakery in the Klang Valley which is well-known for them.
Inspired by the bakery’s egg tarts, which come in near-perfect shape with flaky puff pastry filled with smooth and soft egg custard, I scoured the internet to look for a recipe which I could follow for some homemade ones.
Most recipes I came across provided methods for making both the oil- and ­water-based dough for the puff pastry, so I ditched them for the ready-made ­frozen ones, and tweaked the recipe for the egg custard filling to suit my ­tastebuds for texture and sweetness.
I also improvised with the tools as I didn’t have tart moulds or fluted cookie cutters of the required size. ­
Unless you’re making them to ­impress your guests, or for that perfect ­picture for Instagram, you could, like me, ­replace tart moulds with a muffin pan, and use any circular-shaped utensil such as a small bowl of the required size to cut out the puff pastry.
RECIPE
Ingredients (makes eight)
► 1 packet frozen puff pastry (I used puff pastry squares of 10x10cm)
► 100ml full cream milk
► 50g fine castor sugar
► 2 large eggs
► 1/3 tsp vanilla essence
Method
1. Grease eight slots of the muffin pan with some butter.
2. Using a 9cm or 10cm round-shaped cookie cutter (or bowl), cut eight pieces of pastry.
3. Press each piece down gently into the muffin pan. Poke the base gently with a fork without piercing through. Refrigerate for 15 minutes.
4. Preheat oven to 200°C.
5. Gently mix the eggs, milk, vanilla essence and sugar in a bowl. Do not beat until frothy.
6. After mixing thoroughly, sift the mixture a few times until you get a smooth mixture.
6. Fill each pastry mould three-quarter full with the egg mixture.
7. Place the muffin pan at the lower rack of the oven and bake for 15 minutes until pastry puffs up and egg filling is cooked (toothpick comes out clean when pricked).
8. Remove from oven, leave to cool in pan for 10 minutes.
9. Gently lift the tarts out of the pan and serve.