Macau Vanilla Custard Tart

Complete Disclosure: This post is written based on a complimentary newly published book for review.

These Macau Vanilla Custard Tart are wonderful treats for tea time. The aroma of vanilla perfumed the whole kitchen when these were baked in the oven.

This recipe is from a new culinary and traveloque book by Mary Kate Tate and Nate Tate called Feeding the Dragon. We get a lot of newly published books for review offer but I normally decline the offer. But this book caught my eye because it’s a traveloque through China.

I’m looking forward to visit Ben in Beijing and I would love to learn more about Beijing through the eyes of Mary Kate Tate and Nate Tate. You can check out Mary Kate Tate & Nate Tate travelogue via their blog Feeding the Dragon.

Feeding the Dragon is part cookbook and part cultural travelogue. It is arranged by the author’s travel itinerary starting from Beijing, the capital city and then running down China’s east coast, looping through the southern jungles of Yunnan Province, over the Tibetan Plateau in the west, through the Taklimakan Desert in the north near Afghanistan, and then back to the capital. The book is filled with photos of their travel.

Feeding the Dragon features 100 recipes from the various regions from Buddhist vegetarian dishes to lamb kebabs to Macau’s famous egg custard tart.

I love sweet treat and this is the first recipe that I tried from this book.

Ingredients

• 1 large egg
• 3 large egg yolks
• 1 cup whole milk (I substituted with 1 cup of half & half since I cant find a one cup size whole milk carton in stores)
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons vanil1a extract
• 1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed but still cold

Source: Feeding the Dragon by Mary Kate Tate & Nate Tate

Yield: 18 egg tarts (the original recipe makes 12 egg tarts but the excess filings is more than enough to make another 6 egg tarts)

The Diversely Delicious Cookbook

The Diversely Delicious cookbook is compiled by Suanne and based largely on the recipes of the Richmond Community Kitchen in 2009.

The two main persons behind the Richmond Community Kitchens are Minoo and Charlene. The cookbook also includes some of Suanne’s own recipes and also recipes from the Canning Workshop ran by Karen Dar Woon.

The Diversely Delicious cookbook contains over 150 recipes from all over the world … including Greek, Indian, Peruvian, Korean, Vietnamese, and Spanish to name a few. It also includes a comprehensive section on canning techniques.

The recipe in the cookbook are easy to make and is something that everyone can attempt at home.

The cookbook is not cheap I must say. This is simply because of several factors:

• It is not printed in bulk and thus we cannot capitalize on bulk discounts.
• There is a markup on the cookbook of which the proceed goes entirely to the Richmond Community Kitchen

The Diversely Delicious cookbook is available in two versions — softcover and hardcover (with dust jacket).

If you are to order just one cookbook delivered to Vancouver, the cost including taxes and shipping is  CAD $54 for the softcover. The hardcover version is CAD $68.

I can help you save on the shipping and bulk discount by ordering for you. In that case, it is $46 for the softcover and $58 for the hardcover. We need at least 10 copies to qualify for this price. I can only do this for those of you living in Metro Vancouver.

So, if you are interested in buying a copy and in the process help support the Richmond Community Kitchen, please send me an email to suanne@chowtimes.com.

About Project DIVERSELY DELICIOUS

I think we can take the wraps off now.

Some of you might have noticed that countdown just under banner of chowtimes.com. We had been calling it our Project DIVERSELY DELICIOUS. During the Christmas holidays, Suanne had been sitting for countless hours at the computer working tediously at the project.

Well … we finally got the package this afternoon. We were so excited and had been waiting for this for days.

We opened up the package and loved what we saw!!

Ladies and gentlemen … THIS is Project DIVERSELY DELICIOUS …

It is a cookbook!

It is tentatively called Diversely Delicious. We wanted to do this cookbook as a contribution to the …