Pandan Custard Tarts

If you have been following my blog, you can easily tell that pandan is our favorite flavour. It has that sweet fragrant and lovely green colour and is used a lot in Asian culinary especially South East Asian. In Indonesia, where I come from, pandan is used on numerous traditional sweet cakes/snacks/drinks for it’s smell and colour, there are some savoury dishes that also use pandan for extra fragrant; we can say pandan is a staple in almost every household.

At home, my mom likes to bake this custard tarts in the original flavour, just with a dash of vanilla extract. When I tried this first time, I divided the custard into two batches, one just the original and I add pandan extract to the other batch. Turns out my husband prefers the pandan ones and I, too agree with him. The pandan ones have that nice smell and I think they look pretty (read: unique).

If you google search custard tart recipe, there are countless versions of recipes around, not just the custard fillings, also the pastry shell. I guess we could try as many recipes as we like until we find the one that really suit our liking, but for now I am very happy with this recipe from my mom. I hope you try this recipe and you’ll like them as much as we do 🙂

For the crust:

• 150 grams butter
• 250 grams all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon maize starch
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 tablespoons water
• 2 tablespoons castor sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt

For custard filling:

• 5 whole eggs
• 1/2 can of sweet condensed milk
• 200 ml water
• 100 ml evaporated milk
• dash of pandan extract or vanilla extract for original custard flavour

For the crust: mix well all ingredients (best with pastry knife or fork), do not over knead the dough. Once it can be shaped into ball and not stick to sides of the bowl, it is ready to be place in tart molds. Bake the crust at 160C for about 10 minutes and take off heat.

For the custard filling: whisk all ingredients well and sift the mixture to get rid of lumps. Once smooth, pour this custard mixture to fill up each mold. Bake at 160C for about 20 minutes (I use small tart molds, time may vary depends on thickness of custard) until the custard is set, or when a toothpick is inserted to the middle of the tart and come out clean.

Tips:

• Do not over bake to achieve the smooth surface.
• It is best to use lower heat to make sure the crust will not be too brown by the time the custard is set