Binging with Babish: Egg Tarts from Avatar The Last Airbender

I know it was supposed to be his stomach growling, but that really made it sound like Aang had broken up. Hey, what's up guys, welcome back to Bingeing with Babish, where this week we'll be taking a look at egg custard

tarts

from Avatar, The Last Airbender, first probably. the most accurate versions of the show feature Hong Kong-style egg

tarts

because, try as I might, I can't seem to drop this egg for comedic purposes, so let's start with our puff pastry shell. A food processor holds 225 grams of all-purpose flour. 50 grams of powdered sugar and 9 tablespoons of unsalted butter.

We'll just mix them a few times until the mixture looks like wet sand, as you'll notice we're making a sort of shortcrust pastry here, but instead of the usual. ice water we have a large beaten egg that we will add to the food processor and process until the mixture comes together to form an extremely smooth ball of dough, a ball that we will wrap in p

last

ic wrap and refrigerate for about half an hour. hour or until ready to use, during which time we will prepare our custard, the Hong Kong variation of which is quite different from any you have made before.

First, we have 150 thousand of very hot tap water to which we are I'm going to add 75 grams of superfine sugar. I also have half a teaspoon of vanilla powder here, but you can be a normal human being and use half a teaspoon of vanilla extract. Whisk until dissolved. Beat two large eggs in milk 85 millimeters and then. Whisk everything regular size together in a larger bowl than the one you chose and we'll strain this mixture into a pourable container to make the pouring action easier in the future and then it's time to cut our dough and line our tart pans.

In this case a cupcake tin, Hong Kong-style egg tarts usually use a fluted baking tin, but the Avatar The Last Airbender one seemed to have flat, straight sides, so on a well-floured surface with a well floured rolling pin and we are rolling out the dough up to 6 millimeters, cut into two rounds a little larger than the diameter of our cupcake mold and begin to line the molds with our dough, simply press down on the cup and squeeze it by the sides if you feel like you're squishing your dough too much, don't be afraid to roll out your circles a little thinner before lining them to 10 and as you can see, we want dough balls that are very flirty and stick out over the edge of the cupcake. 10 and then before filling with our pastry cream.

We're going to skim off any pesky foam left on top of the egg mixture and then fill our egg tarts 3/4 to 7/8 full before placing everything on a rimmed baking sheet. to avoid spills, then bake in a preheated 1 degree Fahrenheit oven for 10 minutes, lower the heat to 350 and ask for another 15 until the dough is golden brown and the filling is set but still very, very wobbly once they are cool enough to manipulate them. Go ahead and take them out of the tin and ideally serve them while they're still nice and warm and as you can see we have a tender but crispy puff pastry crust that's almost reminiscent of a sugar cookie and a soft, creamy custard interior.

Now it's another common preparation for These are with homemade or store-bought puff pastry, but I think this is the simplest and most accurate version and is a worthy member of the clean custard club, but now let's go completely off the reservation and use this as an excuse to mesh. organized and not the very difficult Portuguese version you may have seen on the latest season of the great British baking show. First, we combine 150 grams of all-purpose flour with one gram of kosher salt, beat with a small whisk until smooth and add 80 milliliters of water, as you can see, one of my New Year's resolutions is to use the metric more frequency and then go ahead and knead this until it forms a shaggy, sticky dough that comes out, let it rest for 20 minutes and what we're not going to do is wrap. wrap it in p

last

ic wrap that's what we're not going to do.

I did this for demonstration purposes. I was not wrong. Instead, we will drop the rough dough onto a well-floured surface and cover it with a bowl, this will allow our gluten to relax so we can roll it out to about 12 by 12 inches. Sorry, I said 12 inches. I meant thirty point five by thirty point five centimeters. So I have here a stick or 113 grams of very soft unsalted butter. One third of which I'm going to spread over about two thirds of our lean mass, does that make any sense? We will then laminate by holding the unbuttered third of the dough over the centered buttered pieces and then folding the remaining buttered third. that we effectively closed it like a pamphlet, our metric of pamphlets, I don't even know, anyway, we are rotating it 90 degrees, re-forming it into a square and repeating the process one more time before rolling it out one last time and rolling out the third remaining butter on approximately ninety percent of the surface of our dough with the exception of a one-inch edge, I mean two and a half centimeters, which we are going to moisten with wet fingers and begin to roll the dough tightly into a log from the opposite side. finish by rolling and pressing lightly to seal, wrapping in plastic wrap and refrigerating for at least two hours, preferably overnight while cooling, we need to make the Portuguese version of our egg custard, this starts with a sugar syrup in a medium saucepan, goes to one hundred and fifty. grams of granulated sugar 75 thousand of water a metric stick of cinnamon and half of the peel of a lemon that we have rubbed well to remove the protective wax, then we simply bring this mixture to a low heat and thus all the sugar has dissolved. removing it from the heat and letting it cool completely for 30 minutes, once cooled it's time to work on another very strange egg custard formulation.

In a large bowl goes 40 grams of all-purpose flour and then I have a cup and a half. or about 350 milliliters of whole milk here, about a third of which I'm going to add to the regular size flour beating well until it's thick and creamy and there are no lumps left, then I'm going to set it aside because we're heading to the stove where you're pouring the remaining milk back into a large saucepan, heating over medium-low heat until simmering, there we go, at which point we'll add our flour and milk mixture, whisking constantly and cooking for one to three minutes. until it becomes thick, sticky and/or creamy. almost like a very thick, lump-free pancake batter.

I shudder to think of the descriptors Matty Matheson might use anyway. At this point we're going to turn off the heat, which as you can see I forgot to add the straining sugar syrup for an easier combination along with my half teaspoon of vanilla powder or your half teaspoon of vanilla extract and whisk well to Combine until slightly cooled, at which point we will add six large egg yolks, the hotter the mixture the faster you will need to whisk, otherwise I am going to scramble the eggs, but hopefully you should end up with a smooth custard , a custard that just to make it smooth we will strain one more time to catch the errant lumps.

Also keep an eye out for my jazz album that I listen to during the day for the sake of smoothness available in 2025, now that we have our custard made and keeping it warm just off camera, we are taking our dough out of the refrigerator, which should have formed a nice hard log, go ahead and shake angry take it out of the plastic wrap and place it on a lightly floured work surface, trim any ragged edges and then it's time to divide it into twelve equal sized pieces, each of which, when you look at them From one side, you should have a tight swirl of butter, this will give the Donata edge its characteristic flaky, crispy bottom.

Now all we have to do is not mess up the delicate butter layers we've worked so hard to design. We are going to start by placing a round dough in the center. of our cupcake mold and start pressing it down from the center outwards, trying to cover the bottom of the mold with batter first and then the sides. It will take a little practice, but after maybe your 50th or 100th batch, you should do them with skill. from a Portuguese request, go ahead, rinse and repeat until the cupcake pan is full and as before, we want the batter to come just above the rim of the cup, so we'll fill them three quarters or 75% full . with our egg custard mixture, then we place these guys on a preheated baking sheet that we've had in a 500 degree Fahrenheit oven for about 20 minutes, oh boy, I forgot about the temperatures in a 500 degree Fahrenheit oven or 260 degrees Celsius.

Continue for 12 to 16 minutes or until the cream is puffed and lightly golden and the dough is nothing short of beautiful, hopefully with the signature swirl on the bottom. I could tell you this is amazing and I'm a member of the clean plate club, but me. I'll let my pastry speak for itself.