mary berry’s tarte au citron.
Finally got my mitts on a 9” flan tin & set about making Mary Berry’s Tarte au Citron yesterday.. I’ve got a bit of an obsession with lemony-tasting things at the moment & made the Hummingbird Bakery’s Lemon Bars earlier this week too.
This recipe has been taken from the BBC’s food website (a good place to pass half an hour) & you can find it here.. It looks rather intense, but actually it’s very in depth, doesn’t use weird cooking terms you don’t understand & gives you a handy few hints on how to avoid making a huge mess of it. Who knows, maybe one day I will be good enough to go to the bake-off too!?
Ingredients:
Pastry:
- 175g (6oz) plain flour
- 100g (3.5oz) cold cubed butter
- 25g (1oz) icing sugar
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tbsp cold water
Filling:
- 5 eggs
- 125ml double cream
- 225g (8oz) caster sugar
- 4 lemons, juice & zest.
- extra icing sugar for dusting.
Method:
i. Place the flour, butter & sugar in a bowl & rub together until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. The recipe says to do this in a food processor – but I don’t have one. Fingers seem to work just as well though. Add the egg yolk & water & bring together into a ball of dough. If your butter is very soft you can leave it in the fridge for 15 minutes. I was impatient & didn’t do this.
ii. Grease the bottom of your flan tin & dust with flour. Place onto a piece of parchment paper & draw a rough circle approximately 1” larger than the base. Place your ball of pastry onto the base, flatten & roll out until it is slightly larger than your drawn circle. Gently fold the pastry into the middle, drop the base back into the greased tin & push the folded pastry into the corners & up the sides of the tin.
iii. Prick the base all over with a fork, cover with clingfilm & chill in the fridge for 30 minutes (I forgot to do this bit too). Preheat the oven to 200c/400f/Gas6. Remove the cling film & line the inside of the pastry case with tin foil for blind baking. Fill the case with baking beans & bake for 12-15mins in the oven. Remove the foil & beans, trim off the excess pastry from round the edge & return to the oven for a further 10-12mins. Remove & leave on a wire rack to cool. Reset the oven temperature to 170c/325f/Gas3.
iv. Make the filling by beating the eggs, then add the rest of the ingredients & whisking together until smooth. Transfer to a jug, or if you’re lazy like me beat them together in a jug to begin with. Place your empty pastry case back onto the oven shelf & add the filling from the jug. Bake for 30-35 minutes until mostly set, but there should be a little wobble in the middle.
v. Leave to cool a little before removing from the tin, dust with icing sugar & eat.
& there we go.. Mine is probably nowhere near a Mary Berry standard & I would be voted off The Great British Bake Off forthwith.. But it tastes great & even better today straight from the fridge. Yum.
