LEMON TART or tarte au citron

Having friends round for dinner in November is a different kettle of fish from earlier in the year.  There is definitely a need for something comforting and warming.  On the actual day the fog never lifted and the temperature outside did not reach double figures.  I was tempted to make a crumble for pudding but with a soup for starters and a casserole for mains settled on lemon tart instead, thinking it would be lighter.

I had made one before but instead of leafing through numerous cook books for the recipe I looked online.  I somehow ended up using this recipe for Classic Lemon Tart on Mary Berry's own website.  It comes from her Complete Cookbook.

The recipe uses nine eggs and six large lemons!  When I looked again I saw that I needed a 28cm tart tin with a loose bottom, which I don't have.  I used my 25cm tin and scaled down the ingredients accordingly.  I also used ready made sweet pastry to save time, draping it over the edge of the tin as per the instructions.  Somehow the side of the tart broke away from the overlap in a couple of places and shrank back a bit.  This meant that the tart couldn't be filled right to the top because it would have overflowed.  I ended up with filling left over so simply poured this into a small dish and baked it separately.  Something to enjoy later!

It was absolutely divine, very sharp and lemony, and would serve probably about twelve people as it's very rich and you really only need a very small slice!  It kept really well in the fridge and was still delicious several days later so I would definitely make it ahead next time.  This would give me time to make my own pastry as I suspect the ready made one I used was a bit too thin and that might be why it split at the edge.

Since then I have found other Mary Berry recipes for lemon tart with more manageable quantities of ingredients!  One is on the BBC Food website here and was a technical challenge in an early series of the Great British Bake Off.  It appears in the book from the series called "How to Bake".   A very similar version of it also appears on the current edition of Mary's Baking Bible (although not the original edition).  I would use either of those next time although they both specify a 23 cm tin and at the current time of writing I only have a 20cm or 25cm!  A reason to pay a visit to our lovely nearby cookware shop perhaps!  (Or maybe I'll wait until our next visit to the UK where our local DIY/ironmonger's shop sells everything like that for much more reasonable prices!)

A tip for zesting lemons: always zest before you cut it in half to squeeze out the juice.  Zesting this many lemons is time consuming but much more fiddly if you try to zest afterwards!  Also: if you use a microplane zester the best way to get all the zest out of the groove is to use the rounded end of a teaspoon handle - not your fingernail as I once saw done in an episode of Celebrity Bake Off.  Someone (I forget who) used her hideously long false nail to scoop out the zest before putting it in the cake and if you have ever noticed how grubby those nails can be underneath..........YUK !!

Ingredients

1 ready made, ready rolled pack of sweet pastry

7 eggs

240ml double cream

280g caster sugar

zest and juice of 5 lemons

Icing sugar to dust before serving.

Method

If your pastry is in the fridge bring it out about 15 minutes before you want to use it otherwise it may crack when you unroll it.

Preheat the oven to 200° C / 180° fan / gas mk 6.  Butter a 25cm loose based fluted tart tin.

Unroll the pastry and line the tin with it, tucking the pastry into the sides and draping the excess over the edge.  Place on a baking sheet, line with baking paper and fill with baking beans.  

Blind bake the pastry for 15 minutes or until the edges are just golden.  Remove the paper and beans and carefully trim away the excess pastry.  Return to the oven for 10-12 minutes until dry.  Remove from the oven and set aside to cool.  

Reduce the oven temperature to 160° C / 140° fan / gas mk 3.

To make the filling, put all the ingredients into a large bowl and with an electric whisk beat until well combined.  The mixture will still be very liquid.

Pour the mixture carefully into the cool pastry case but do not overfill, only close to the top if there are no gaps where it might leak.

Transfer carefully to the oven and bake for 35-40 minutes.  The filling should be set but with a slight wobble in the middle.

Serve cool or completely cold.  Give a generous dusting of icing sugar just before serving.

Serves 10-12.