<p>So while my mother’s on the evening shift, my sister and I are baking custard egg tarts and I bought an extra large jumbo carton for this purpose. Maybe it’s the funny effect of growth hormones, but three out of the nine eggs we cracked are double-yolked. Do we have the equivalent of 12 eggs now? Do we have to compensate for the lesser amounts of egg white? Will it affect the consistency of our custard filling?</p>
<p>We’re not really experts in baking, and <em>gasp</em> that’s when I thought of the parent’s cafe!</p>
<p>I think your custard will be fine. My custard recipe (a Mexican flan) uses only the yolks. If you notice any difference at all, it would likely be that your custard is just a little bit firmer than usual. </p>
<p>I do think it’s unusual to have that many double-yolked eggs! I bake a lot and generally only come across one in perhaps 6 dozen eggs.</p>
<p>What is a custard egg tart? Is it a custard tart? Custard by definition is an egg dish. The size matters more than the number of yolks. Since the amount of liquid in the recipe in proportion to the egg determines how “solid” the custard is, using jumbo eggs might make it more solid because you have less liquid to egg with jumbo than with large eggs. Using double yolks will also make the color darker, but it shouldn’t hurt the recipe in any way.</p>
<p>Not without human intervention really, since the chicks will tend to fight and kill each other before they fully hatch.</p>
<p>I should probably say egg/custard tart – I’m reproducing a type of tart produced in Southeast Asia. We’re synthesising a combined recipe – one calls for more milk and no boiled sugar water – another calls for less milk and less sugar-water. Unwittingly trying to create a combined “theory” from the two recipes we added both amounts, so the mixture is still very liquidy. We probably at the moment have a very large and imprecise dose. It looks like we have more custard than our dough will have room for.</p>
<p>Combined by the fact that we can’t find where we put our tart trays, we’re looking to just create one giant pie instead. This may consume less of the dough’s surface area. (There was a fair bit of SAT math involved in trying to create one recipe from two because of the need to resolve the ratio of surface area to volume, hahahaha. Google calculator’s ability to convert cooking units and densities of all kinds saves the geek cook’s life.) </p>
<p>galoisien,
One more tip - if you are making a big pie instead of individual tarts, I think you should reduce your oven temperature by 25 - 50 degrees. Actually, start with a hot oven (375 for a glass pan, 400 for metal) and put your pie on the bottom oven rack to help ensure that the crust will come out done and not doughy. After 10 minutes, reduce heat to 300 for glass, 325 for metal and bake until the custard is set. </p>
<p>By the way, a general proportion is 2 large eggs for each 1 cup of liquid, with 3 - 4 cups liquid (counting eggs) for an 8-inch pie. If you are using 9 eggs, I think you will have enough for 2 pies!</p>
<p>How much does the geometry of the container affect baking in terms of timing and consistency, etc.? Cuz given the amount of dough we have we’re opting to use a rectangular 9x9x2 (8.5 x 8.5 x 1.75?) pan.</p>
<p>Edit: We’ve poured in the custard mix and we’re pre-heating the oven now. :-D</p>
<p>I think the shape of the pan will have no effect on the consistency. As for time, I’m not a very systematic cook…my advice is to bake it until it is done. For future reference, it is better to pour the filling into the crust immediately before putting it in the oven, rather than letting it sit in the crust while the oven preheats, because that would tend to make the crust soggy. It’s midnight where I live, so I’ll wish you good night and good luck and hope to read about good results in the morning!</p>
<p>Killer secret for custard pie/tarts and keeping the crust crisp:</p>
<p>Cook the crust empty, with just some weights (like dried beans) inside, for 5-10 minutes, until it is piping hot and doesn’t look so raw. Immediately pour the custard in and continue baking.</p>
<p>When the eggs hit crust that’s already at 350 degrees, the part touching the crust solidifies almost instantly. Then this solid barrier keeps the liquid in the rest of the custard from seeping into the crust while it bakes.</p>
<p>I’m guessing you got the high percentage of double yokes because of the size of the eggs - “extra large jumbo”. These ARE chicken eggs, aren’t they?</p>
<p>Double-yolked eggs have always been reasonably common, but they are usually detected via candleing and removed during the inspecting and sorting process. It’s considered to be a “flaw.” However, sometimes they are sold separately at a premium. I once ate at a restaurant that specialized in rich omlettes that were made from nothing but specially-purchased double-yolked eggs.</p>
<p>Every once in a while I’ll get a box with multiple double yolks. I think some chickens are more prone to producing them than others. I actually rarely have gotten just one.</p>
<p>I used to date a chicken “farmer’s daughter”, and they used to save me the double yolk eggs (and an occasional triple yolk!) when I visited. You can usually tell by the shape, they look a bit oblong (there’s a good joke in here somewhere, but I haven’t figured it out yet).</p>
<p>I have photos – hold on, I’m uploading them to flickr and facebook. It went well for an experiment, but we are definitely changing a few things next time…</p>
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