Fashion and Food for your Tastebuds

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Lemon Tart

I love lemons! The color, the freshness and well basically everything about them. They brighten up any meal and always manage to make me smile. This was actually my first time making a lemon tart….I know, I say I love lemons so much but I never actually made a tart out of them, I promise I’m telling the truth! That’s probably because I always thought it would be hard since I had never made a Pâte Brisée.
I had a great afternoon eating lemon tarts with my wonderful friend N, when she said “Why don’t you make these? They’re so good and they’re my favorite!” You know, I never really thought of making lemon tarts and it’s true, they are simply delicious. So I got that feeling of excitement I always get when I am introduced to a brand new recipe. And I went to my kitchen and began making my own lemon tarts.
I began making the Pâte Brisée, which is wonderful pastry dough that happened to surprise me. It was extremely easy to make. It was basically just like the pastry dough that I made for the Apple Tarts, with the addition of an egg yolk which makes the dough extra rich. It is really important to chill your dough for a minimum of 30 minutes, that way it will be extremely easy to rollout, and you wont have a hot mess on your hands. 
The lemon curd filling was my favorite part of this experience. It was a wonderful shade of yellow, tasted so fresh and had a wonderful scent of citrus. The only slightly bothering part about this filling was standing in front of the stove stirring the mixture constantly for 12 minutes or until it was thickened. But it got there, and it was beautiful. I let it chill in the fridge because I love all my desserts extra cold. After filling my tart shells with the chilled filling, I let them cool completely in the fridge and the lemon curd sets and becomes the perfect consistency. Lovely. 
I love tarts. I know my last post was an apple tart, but in my eyes these two are entirely different tarts with equal importance. I am proud to say that these tarts came out well! For my first time, not bad! And the great things about these lemon tarts is that you can make all the components in advance and just assemble them right before serving. 

For all you lemon lovers out there!


Go on, have a Petit Treat!