The best lemon tart ever

Occasionally Home Paddock treats us to a recipe, such as this one for spicy lime biscuits. Clearly she is positioning herself as not only New Zealand’s foremost farming blogger but also our foremost foodie blogger before Annabel Langbein, Jennifer Yee or Ray McVinnie get started.

Hmmm. What can I do to meet this bake-off challenge?

Quite a bit, actually. Watch this space for my Gai Pad Med Mamuang which rivals the Mai Thai’s, but for now here is an amazing lemon tart we had last weekend for a whanau luncheon. My wife found the recipe from James Martin’s book Desserts in the 14 April issue of The Week. She realised early on while making it that Martin had cunningly put the wrong quantities for several ingredients – as chefs do. So here is a reworked and hence copyright-free workable version. It serves eight, more or less, depending on greed.

Classic lemon tart
5 eggs
190 g caster sugar
250 ml double cream
zest and juice of 4 lemons
butter for greasing
225 g sweet shortcrust pastry
1 tbsp icing sugar for dusting
double cream to serve

Preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F. Break the eggs into a bowl, add the sugar and whisk gently, then add the cream and the lemon juice and zest, and leave to rest.

Butter a 20 cm loose-bottomed flan tin and roll out the pastry to a thin but even
depth. Using a rolling pin, carefully lift the pastry and place it over the tin very loosely. Press the pastry into the bottom and sides of the tin, but don’t trim it.

Line the tart with a circle of greaseproof paper that is bigger than the tart and fill with dried pulses or ceramic baking beans. Bake for about 10 minutes. Remove from the oven, take out the beans and paper then put back into the oven for 3 or 4 minutes.

Turn the oven down to 110°C/225°F. Pour in the lemon mix and bake for one hour until the tart is just set. Remove from the oven and trim the edges. Leave to cool for one hour.

Dust the tart with icing sugar and put under a hot grill to caramelise the top. Serve with thick cream. Eat. Enjoy.