Posted by Loulou on Feb 8, 2015 | 6 comments

Gee, I wonder why there are only 11 lemon tarts…? Papa…have you been in the kitchen recently, hmmm?

Well, I know there are large issues on our horizons and political upheavals and horrendous acts of unimaginable cruelty in the news and today, I just felt like taking a little corner of the world and sending praise to a young woman with a blog called Butter Baking and say to her, thank you, thank you for being where my mama, a baker, could discover your truly amazing recipe for the easiest tart dough she has ever encountered.

THANK YOU, TREE, FOR YOUR GENEROSITY!

And I get to help by tasting a tiny bit of the butter and eventually the crust, which is simply the crunchiest, butteryest, delicious crust mama has ever used for her lemon tarts, and she asked me to pass this website on to any home bakers who have slaved over pie dough, cut fat into flour with two knives, insisted on cold butter for pâte brisée or pâte sable a light touch and sometimes, even so, come up with a tough, tasteless pastry that just didn’t work.

Butter Baking does mention that the pastry is adapted from David Liebovitz site, which in turn used a recipe from Promenades Gourmandes, so whoever came up with this in the first place gets a loud myow from me, the butter-taster.

Here’s what you do:

Heat the oven to 200C 400F.

In a glass bowl, put 3 ounces (100 g) butter, 3 tablespoons water, 1 tablespoon sugar, a pinch of salt, and 1 generous teaspoon spoon of duck fat. Mama uses duck fat because it imparts a really great flavor to the dough, but you can use vegetable oil if there are no ducks around. (Or Crisco, mama says, but don’t tell…)

Put the bowl in the heated oven for about 15 minutes or until the butter starts to brown around the edges.

Take out the bowl and quickly stir in 1 rounded cup (about 150 g) of flour until you have a dough that pulls away from the sides of the bowl and is easy to handle. You may need a bit more flour, depending on your flour.

Mama uses a tart pan (see photo), and presses a spoon of the dough into each opening, pushing it up the sides to form a little shell. You may also use the dough to make a whole tart but double the recipe.

Bake the tart shells in a 225C or 425F oven for about 10 minutes until nicely browned.

Now this is the good part. Mama makes a killer lemon curd from our bounteous lemon tree:

2 eggs

2 yolks

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup lemon juice plus zest of the lemons

Pinch of salt

1 stick soft butter

In a saucepan, mix the eggs, sugar, juice and salt and cook over medium heat until thick and smooth and the sauce coats a spoon.

Remove from the heat and stir in the soft butter, beating well until the curd is smooth. Let cool.

When your tart shells are ready, spoon in the lemon curd, smoothing over the tops, and bake for another 5-6 minutes or just until the curd it set.

Mama says this was a breakthrough day for her, to find out that your COOK your pie dough instead of carefully tiptoeing around it and freezing the butter and not touching anything too much etc, etc etc.

THANK YOU, nice French woman friend of David Liebovitz and Butter Baking for changing mama’s life. Doesn’t happen that often, especially to a seasoned baker! Ah, the things we don’t know yet…

At least now mama won’t be walking on eggs around her pie dough, haha…