Crisp pastry, the velvety filling, the brisk citrus sharpness as you bite in - not much beats a good lemon tart. Today we decided to share with you our favorite Lemon Tart Recipe from one of our favorite cookbooks - Heston Blumenthal at Home, that we'll review next Monday.
The key to making the perfect lemon tart is to make the filling as smooth as possible. It has to be at the point where it's just set and no more. If the custard is overcooked it will be too heavy and if it's undercooked it will collapse. Reaching that precise level of set can be tricky. The conventional way to check for this is the 'Wobble Test' - shaking the tart to see whether it's firm enough. But how do you describe this in a recipe? The answer is a digital thermometer. Using the thermometer to take the filling to 62 ºC and then 70 ºC will always guarantee you a perfectly cooked Lemon Tart.
120 g icing sugar
3 large egg yolks
300 g (2 cups) all puropse flour
150 g (2/3 cup) unsalted butter
3.5 g (1/2 teaspoon) fine sea salt
1/2 vanilla pod
Zest of 1/2 lemon, finely grated
Finely grated zest and juice of 5 lemons
300 g double cream
390 g white granulated sugar
9 large eggs
1 large egg yolk
80 g white granulated sugar
Crème fraiche