Last Hurrah Lemon Tarte

This recipe is my last hurrah before we break the kitchen with these tiles

to put a new kitchen in with a huge stove (hooray!), with a lot of counter space so I’m not tempted to use the lid of the garbage can (hooray!), and with a dishwasher (hurrah!).

I’m going to paint it pink to match these towels.

No really, it’s actually to match the tree outside the kitchen window which is mauve all Summer and Fall, and is covered with pink blossoms in the Spring.

Sir is really regretting giving me carte blanche over the kitchen ever since I started talking about pink.

So the tarte.

I had a lot of lemons, and I got a recipe from … eeks, I’m not sure what magazine to give credit to since it’s a photocopy. But let’s try it together, okay? We’ll start with the crust.

Butter: 125 grams, which is about a half cup of butter or just over a stick (according to the online butter conversion). Cut it in chunks to make it more manageable.

Confectioner’s sugar: 80 grams, or a heaping ½ cup, or nearly 3 oz.

250 grams of flour, or 2 ½ cups. I used gluten-free, of course.

30 grams of ground almonds, or 1/3 cup.

1 egg and

a pinch of salt.

Put all the ingredients in the cuisinart if you have one – it will make your life much easier, especially if you’re making a gluten-free crust, which tends to get sticky.

Once it’s mixed, it should look like this:

Wrap the dough in saran wrap. I take two large pieces and put them, one over the other in the shape of a cross. Wrap the dough tightly in the saran wrap and put it in the fridge for a half-hour.

And then generously butter the quiche pan because you’re going to have to remove the tarte from the pan when it’s cooked.

Preheat the oven to 210° celsius or about 400° F, but only do this if your oven does not get too hot. If it does get really hot, stick to 350°F maximum because I burned mine (sniff) by following the directions.

Now let’s make the filling. Take your lemons – you probably need about 8 if they’re small, but you might get enough out of 4 if they are large and juicy.  (Young Lady in the background)

Take the zest from 4 lemons before you cut and juice them because it’s much easier that way. I like this little number – it’s much simpler than bloodying your fingers on the zester that’s found on the cheese grater. And it was only 2 euros at our local supermarket.

When you’ve gotten all the zest, you’re ready to start juicing away. You’ll need nearly a cup of juice and zest.

When done, it might be about time to take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out. It helps to roll it between two sheets of wax paper.

It doesn’t stick to the rolling pin,

and when you’re done, you can peel off the top paper and plop it upside down on the tarte pan. Just even out the edges and crimp them.

Poke holes in the bottom and put pastry balls on the bottom of the pan before slipping it into the oven.

Is that what they’re called in English? Pastry balls? Otherwise, look here.

It’s the rolling hills of pastry land.

Your crust will be all puffy if you bake it with nothing to weigh it down. Oh yes!  Bake for 15 minutes, then take it out and remove the balls.

Now that the crust is ready, let’s get back to the filling.

Melt 3 ½ ounces of butter, which is just under a half cup. ( That’s 100 grams, by the way.)

Once your butter is melting and your lemon juice with zest is on hand, measure out 1 1/3 cups sugar. (Pause button – why does that not seem like a lot to me for all those lemons? I measured it out in grams so I’m a little nervous about what cooking conversion is telling me; nevertheless, let’s go with it).

And then crack your 4 whole eggs

and separate your four yolks (4 whole eggs plus 4 yolks).

Mix it together with the sugar

add the lemon juice and zest

and …. don’t forget the melted butter! I nearly did (maybe because the butter is on the stove and I’m preparing this in the living room while the kitchen is being emptied).

Mix it all together and pour it into your baked crust.

Don’t be shocked that it’s so runny. It will firm up with all those eggs.

But do be prepared and pull your oven tray out to receive the tarte so that you don’t spill the liquid all over the bottom of the oven

the same way you did all over the stove when you poured it into the pan.

You’re supposed to bake 20-25 more minutes at 350° F, but I just think it’s too hot at that temperature. Look what happened to mine!

Pretty crispy, huh? I’m going to trim the really dark part of the crust.  You should turn it down to 325° when baking the filling.

Now let’s slough it off onto a plate. If you wait and let it cool a bit, you might actually have a chance at a perfect-looking tarte. I didn’t want to wait because it was already well done enough and I wanted to get it out of that hot pan. Also, the fact that the crust is gluten free means that it’s more crumby anyway.  Chances are it wouldn’t have made it out in one piece.

You’re supposed to sprinkle confectioner’s sugar on top, and you know what? That can hide a lot of errors. Having learned from all my mistakes (oven should not be too hot and be prepared for the liquidy filling) your tarte should turn out perfectly.

Make it earlier in the day so that it’s nice and cool by the time you serve it.

And here it is.

It is truly good. The extra sweetness of the almondy crust perfectly balances the tartness of the lemons.

Life handing you lemons lately?

Ingredients

For the crust:

1 egg

80 grams Confectioner’s sugar (heaping 1/2 cup)

250 grams flour (2 1/2 cups)

125 grams butter (1/2 cup)

30 grams ground almonds (1/3 cups)

pinch of salt

For the tarte:

8 eggs (4 whole, 4 yolks)

4 large lemons for about ¾ cups of juice and zest

100 butter (3 1/2 ounces)

250 sugar (1 1/3 cups)

Comments

I love to hear from you, friends. You can comment using the box below or your Facebook profile. But FB doesn't notify me of new comments, so if the post is more than a week old and you want to make sure I see your comment, it's better to use the comment box. Merci!