The story about the cheese tarts

So two Saturdays ago, I tried my hand at baking some Japanese-inspired baked cheese tarts. Apparently, the Japanese have got the perfect formula for creating the most delectable cheese tarts which you can eat in several ways - 

1. Fresh out of the oven with soft centers of lava cheese oozing out.

2. Chilled so the cheese custard tastes like soft-serve ice-cream.

3. Room temperature - gooey, creamy and delicious.

Like with most of my baking adventures, I researched extensively online for the most "doable" recipes and then tweaked them to suit my needs. I have only been baking for a year but I find that reducing sugars by at least 1/3 and up to 1/2 of the original recipes doesn't affect the actual baking. Once you reduce the sweetness, you can better taste the other flavours in your baked products [You should see nephew #2's face when he ate my lemon curd tart...I was sure he would give up eating it since it was really tangy...but it seems he now has a better appreciation of lemons...*winks*].

Even though I have amassed quite a bit of baking equipment in the last year, apparently I didn't invest in individual small tart tins or pastry cutters. *LOL* So I weighed the dough, rolled them as evenly as I could and then stuffed them in my muffin tray. And hoped for the best.

I was supposed to blind bake the tart shells, take them out of the tray, add in the cheese custard and then bake them till they turn a nice toasty brown.

Of course, the tart shells were too delicate to come out of the muffin tray (errr...I didn't grease the tray) so I had to fill them up with the cheese custard and send them off for the final bake with my fingers crossed. *LOL*

They came out smelling soooooooo good. But of course, there was THE problem of actually getting them out of the muffin tray. The Gangster Gang (niece + 3 nephews) were all set with their spoons to eat those cheese tarts out of the muffin tray. *picture the scene with your mind's eye...hehe*

But the tart shells shrank as they cooled and with the added weight of the cheese custard, I was able to get the cheese tarts out of the muffin tray totally intact! Yay! :)

But the good fortune didn't last long. Everyone wanted one and refused to share. So my sister and I didn't even get to eat the cheese tarts except for some crumbs left by the niece.... :(  So I baked more the very next day. These photos were actually taken from the second bake because with all the drama, I didn't manage to take any photos! *LOL*

And that is the story about the cheese tarts....my little baking adventure..hehe. 

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