Tarte au citron - Take 3

It had been at least a week since I last made a tarte au citron so I thought I'd have another attempt and enter it into the work bake off!

I decided to go for Raymond Blanc's simple but delicious recipe for the lemon filling whilst using Michel Roux's recipe for the Pâte Sucrée. However, as the pastry cooking instructions are to fully cook the case before putting the cream in I followed Raymond Blanc's recipe for the actual baking of the pastry, which I found worked fine.


I took the tart into work and found there were slightly more people in the office than normal, but still managed 11 servings and got a rather good score of 94%!!! As you can see from the scoreboard I've not had much competition so we'll see how long I last on the top spot. 

Here's the recipe for the filling and instructions for baking the pastry:

Lemon filling

INGREDIENTS

5 medium organic eggs

150g (5 oz.) powdered sugar

85ml (3 fl oz.) fresh lemon juice

2 tbsp. finely grated lemon zest

150ml (1/4 pint) double cream

1) In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, sugar, lemon juice and zest and whisk for a few seconds. Add the cream and whisk it in, then place in the fridge.

Cooking the pastry:

1) Line the pastry case with aluminium foil and fill with dried beans, pushing them against the side. Bake for 10 minutes, then remove from the oven and lift out both foil and beans.

2)Return the tart tin to the oven and bake for a further 20 minutes.

3)Brush the inside of the pastry with the remaining egg yolk and return to the oven for 1 minute (this creates a seal on the pastry and prevents it becoming soggy when the lemon cream is added).

4)Turn the oven down to 140°C (275°F).

Cooking the lemon tart

1) Pour the lemon cream mixture into a saucepan and warm it gently (this is to speed up the cooking time of the tart), being careful not to heat it too much or it will scramble.  

2) Pour the warm mixture into the pastry case and bake for 25 minutes, until barely set.

3) Remove from the oven and leave to cool for at least 1 hour, then dredge icing sugar around the edge of the tart.

4) Remove the tart from the tin and place on a serving plate.

Extra tips/info:

1) To avoid any spillage of the lemon filling over the sides of the pastry case gently pour the lemon filling into the tart case whilst in the oven.