Lemon Tart
Tomorrow is Pie Day 3.14, what do you have prepared to celebrate? Instead of a double crusted pie I decided to bake a tart today (Pie day minus 1 = 3.13 
). The lemons looked really good yesterday at the market so decided upon a lemon tart which uses a pate sucrée pasty.
I like an extra lemony and tart curd so my curd has a bit more lemon zest and a bit less sugar than I usually see in the lemon fillings in recipes.
For the pastry - pate sucrée
75g icing sugar
250g plain flour
125g butter
1 large egg, beaten (plus 1 large egg white, depending on consistency)
Put the icing sugar, flour and butter into a food processor and blitz to breadcrumbs. Continue to blitz, and gradually add the whole egg until the dough comes together. You may need to add a little more egg white. Form the dough into a little round, cover with clingfilm and rest in the freezer for 10 minutes.
Roll the dough out to 12” diameter between two sheets of parchment paper (keep one for later). Transfer to the tart pan. Dock the dough.
Chill it again for 30 minutes. Pre-heat your oven to 350F (180C) while the tart dough is chilling in the pan. When the oven is ready line the top of the crust with parchment paper and place pie weights or dried beans to keep the pie crust from puffing when baking.
Bake the pâte sucrée for 20 minutes. Carefully remove the parchment paper filled with weights and bake for 15 more minutes, until the edges of the crust are golden.
Set the tart shell aside to cool (still in the dish). Leave your oven on at 350F/180C.
In the meantime, make the lemon filling.
Grab a fine-mesh strainer before you start and have it ready within arm’s reach.
For the lemon filling :
1 cup (250ml) lemon juice (about 4 lg lemons)
Zest of 2.5 lemons (organic lemons)
3/4 cup (150g) sugar
1/4 tsp table salt
¾ cup (170g) unsalted butter, cubed.
4 large eggs + 4 large egg yolks
In a medium saucepan (no heat yet), whisk together the lemon juice, lemon zest, sugar, salt, egg yolks and eggs. Add the cubed butter and turn the heat to medium. Whisk slowly until the butter is all melted. Continue whisking steadily until the mixture thickens to a thin custard consistency. This took about 20 mins.
Immediately pass the lemon filling through the fine mesh strainer, directly into the tart shell. You may require a third hand to help get all the curd out of the pot into the strainer. Tap the tart on the counter a couple of times to eliminate air bubbles. Using an offset spatula (or back of a large spoon), smooth out the top of the filling. Bake the tart for 5-6 minutes, until the filling has slightly set and turned slightly deeper in color.
Set aside to cool for at least 30 minutes. Enjoy slightly warm or chilled.
Comments
I hadn't heard it called that till seeing it on TFL. But since I am a grandma and it's almost pi day I am all in. Trying to clean out the fridge as we are leaving town , I am putting 2 kinds of pepperoni, olive tapenade, fresh mozz, feta , and homemade red sauce. I will drizzle with Italian Basil oil as I serve it. Pictures later.
Your lemon pie looks amazing !! I made 4 batches of lemon curd for the freezer the other day as the organic lemons have been wonderful this year. I always use more zest as well . Love the tart /sweet.
Thank you Caroline. I haven’t made a Grandma pizza pie yet but love the idea of them. I can’t wait to see yours, the toppings sound delicious.
Benny
If life brings you lemons…
If life brings you lemons ….. bake a lemon tart, who needs lemonade 😜
Next time I bake this I would give the pastry a bit longer in the oven after removing the pie weights. The bottom was done but I like a bit more colour on the bottom crust. This was even though I baked on my baking steel on the lowest rack.
The filling was sooo good though, nice and tart and not excessively sweet.
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I hope it goes on forever:-) Yours looks scrumptious. Did you try the key lime pie in FL? One of my all time faves. We are doing chicken pot pie tomorrow using the leftover roasted chicken from tonight. Marcella Hazan’s “Two lemon chicken “ synchronicity
Don
It is hard to beat the Blonde Giraffe Key Lime Pie we had the first time we went down to Key West. It apparently was a prize winning pie and it was the best Key Lime Pie I’ve ever eaten. I’ll need to try to bake it at some point in time.
Now your chicken pot pie sounds scrumptious and it is a two lemon chicken? Even better, I love a lemony roasted chicken and it’ll make a great pie Don.
Benny
So pretty 😍😍😍
🤤🤤🤤
Yippee
Thank you Yippee, we really need something bright and sunny today with the weather up here being cloudy and grey. I shared this with the staff in our condo to brighten up their day too. ☀️
Looks delicious Benny! A really nice show of versatility in your baking.
I completely missed today being PI day! Pretty sad for an engineer... ;-)
Shame on you Troy, you deprived yourself of one of the most delicious desserts! You’ll have to celebrate Pi Day + 1 then 😉
any leftover, sir? :p
We gave the rest of it away to the staff in our building, sorry Christi. Hope you had something to celebrate π Pi(e) Day yesterday
Benny
I love a lemon meringue pie and have made a few, but I've made the lemon curd pie only once. I agree it's so deliciously tart and rich. Maybe too rich for me these days :)
Yours is gorgeous! Wow, what a colour.
I've never made that kind of crust but it's on my hazy list of "some day."
David, this style of crust is so easy compared with the usual pate brisée where you are really trying hard to keep the butter from melting, you need to give it a go. I think I’ll be using this crust more often now.
I love a meringue too but sometimes find that they are too sweet so I really love this lemon curd without the meringue topping.
Benny
good point. As an aside, the trick for butter that I adopted was to keep it in the freezer. Because it's 16-18% water it breaks off easily in chunks with a knife + cutting board. I toss the bits and the flour and salt into the food processor and blitz it. Everything stays chilled.
It was the only way to cope with this toasty high rise I'm in :)