Heart-Shaped Dan Ta (Egg Tarts) | Recipe

You’ve got a piece of my tart.

please give it back?

Valentine’s Day is whatever, but an excuse to make / buy yourself extra sweets I’m into. Also there for the discount chocolate the following day.

So this recipe is 80% for me under the guise of being thoughtful for Jeromy, but he’s only going to eat 2-3 of these egg tarts and I will most likely eat the rest. When we first started dating I had an insane sweet tooth and basically subsisted on cookies (no joke, it still terrifies Jeromy to this day that was my diet). Since being together for nearly 9 years (technically 10 but don’t sweat the small stuff) he’s made sure I curbed my diet to be something more sane. BUT when I do bake or am around a bakery, I am that child in a candy shop. Egg tarts are one of the few desserts Jeromy actually loves, so I won’t technically eat all of these…

These Hong Kong style egg tarts have a creamy, egg center surrounded by a buttery, warm mini pie crust. They’re perfectly portioned for one person (or to share I suppose). You can find these at Chinese bakeries all over NYC, but you’ll have to be very lucky to find them warm and the tastiness of the egg tarts really varies between each bakery. No place does them exactly the same! Making them at home is not as hard as you may think, and to make these ones extra cute for V-Day, I made these heart shaped. Which honestly only requires you to mold the tin foils you bake them into hearts. I know…I’m a genius. My ancestors would be so proud. 😂

But the real gem about these is that they’re LACTOSE FREE!!! So to be extra sweet on yourself (or others around you), you won’t have any stomach discomfort or any of the joys that go along with being lactose intolerant. Which would totally ruin a romantic night for you if that’s the vibe you’re going for.

What Ya need:

2 cups all purpose flour
14 tbsp vegan butter (we used Earth Balance)
1/4 cup Lactaid Milk
5 egg yolks + 1 egg yolk
2.5 tbsp cold water
dash of salt
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsp sugar + 4 tbsp sugar divided
1/2 cup hot water
small tin foils to bake them in! I used these ones.

How to do it

First you’ll want to get your dough ready, because that’ll need to chill in the fridge for 30 mins. So mix flour, dash of salt, and 2 tbsp sugar together.
Add butter to the dry mixture, I used a KitchenAid dough attachment to knead together but you can also do this by hand! Then add 1 egg yolk, once the mixture has started to form little clumps (amazing technical terms I know), add in 2.5 tbsp cold water. Continue to push the mixture in to get it evenly mixed
If you are using a KitchenAid, you’ll need to remove the dough once it’s form small clumps to knead by hand and form a dough ball (but most of your work has been done for you). Knead for a few minutes until you’ve created a smooth dough ball, if there are some cracks in the dough or a bit flakes off it’s fine. Overall it should be smooth and not sticking to your hands.
Plastic wrap that up and stick it in the fridge for 30 minutes.
While that’s chilling, you can whip up the egg mixture. Add hot water to 4 tbsp sugar + dash of salt until it’s dissolved. Whisk that with 5 egg yolks, vanilla extract, Lactaid until blended evenly.
**We don’t love overly sweet things in our house, I tend to use less sugar so Jeromy and Andrew will eat some of the desserts and it’s not just me. But if you like sugar you can add an additional tbsp to the mixture here.
If your dough still needs some time to rest, you can clean up the mess you made in the kitchen. If the dough is ready, carry on with said kitchen mess.
Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.
Roll out the dough using a rolling pin, I like to keep the plastic wrap on while I roll it out so nothing sticks together, but you could also flour your surface + rolling pin if you want to remove the plastic wrap.
Roll the dough until it’s about 1/4 cm thick, and use a circle cutout a little bit larger than the tin foils to cut out dough circles.
Push the tin foil top center inwards to create a heart, adjust the left / right side as needed to curve evenly. Don’t point the bottom too much because it will result in some of the filling spilling out when you are filling and you don’t want to lose it!
Once you have your heart shaped tin foils, place the dough circles inside and mold to the shape heart. You should be able to just pick up the dough circles and place them…but if your filling has gone awry you can also paste them in (that happened in our 1st attempt of these, still ok to eat).
Fill each tin heart with the egg mixture being careful to not overfill it as it will rise while baking, about 1 tbsp or less should do it depending on the size of your heart(s).
Bake for 10-15 minutes, watching that the crusts turn a nice golden color and don’t burn! The egg mixture should look more solid on top and have changed to a deeper yellow color than before. The edges of the egg center will be a slightly darker shade than the center. If your egg mixture has popped up above the crust, don’t fret! It’ll settle down once it cools.
Serve warm out of the oven, seriously no better way to eat dan ta than warm out of the oven. The golden crust is crispy and flakey, the center is tight and bouncy from the surface but inside is creamy, rich and warm. You could top these off with powdered sugar if you wanted, or you could eat ‘em straight out the oven with some HK style milk tea.