The title of this post is bold and taken directly from Baking by Dori Greenspan. After chocolate, Brian's favorite flavor is lemon. If a lemon tart is on the dessert menu, he's ready to raise his hand. And I agree: a good tart, with sweet pastry shell and divine lemon curd, is a most refreshing way to end any meal.
This tart is the best you will ever have. Ever.
And the secret is that it is made, not with lemon curd, but with lemon cream. Dori has worked with, written with, and certainly bonded with Pierre Herme, a prince of the French culinary world. And he taught Dori this incredible secret.
When you made a lemon curd, you cook the butter along with the other curd ingredients [eggs, lemon juice, and sugar]. For this cream, you reserve the butter and add it only at the end, in pieces, using a blender. Instead of melting in the curd style and forming a richly thick buttery substance, in the cream method the butter emulsifies — like oil in mayonnaise. As Dori says, the texture is incredibly velvety and light. That light velvet touch just fools your brain. You expect curd and you get cream. It’s packed with flavor and surprise.
I truly mean it: this is the ultimate tart. And you can experiment. I did this recipe with lime replacing lemon. The result was a tart equally ultimate. I’m going in hunt of blood oranges!
The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart
Yield: 1 9-inch tart
Ingredients:
- 1 cup sugar
- Grated zest of three lemons
- 4 large eggs
- ¼ cup fresh lemon juice
- 2 sticks +5 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 9 inch tart shell made with sweet tart dough, recipe follows
Preparation:
Have an instant read thermometer, a strainer and a blender or food processor and. Bring a few inches of water to a simmer in a saucepan.
Put the sugar and zest in a large heat proof bowl that can be set over the pan of simmering water. Off the heat, rub the sugar and zest your fingers until the sugar is moist, grainy and very aromatic. Whisk in the eggs, followed by the lemon juice.
Set the bowl over the pan and start stirring with a whisk as soon as the mixture feels tepid to the touch. Cook the lemon cream until it reaches 180°F area. As you whisk — you must whisk constantly keep the eggs from scrambling — you'll see that the cream will start out light and foamy, then the bubbles will get bigger, and then, as it gets closer 180°F, it will start thicken and the whisk will leave tracks. Heads up at this point — tracks mean that the cream is almost ready. Don't stop whisking or checking the temperature, have patience — depending on how much heat you are giving the cream, getting to temp can take as long as 10 minutes.
As soon as it reaches 180°F, remove the cream from heat and strain it into the container of the blender or food processor. Discard the zest. Let the cream stand, stirring occasionally until it cools to 140°F, about 10 minutes.
Turn the blender to high, or turn on the processor, and with the machine going, add the butter about five pieces at a time. Scrape down the sides of container as needed as you incorporate the butter. Once the butter is in, keep the machine going — to get the perfect light, airy mixture of lemon cream dreams, you must continue to blend the cream for another three minutes you’re your machine protests or it gets a bit too hot, work in one minute intervals, giving the machine a little rest between.
Pour the cream into a container, and press a piece of plastic wrap against the surface to create an airtight seal and refrigerate for at least four hours or overnight. The cream will keep in the fridge for four days, or tightly sealed, in the freezer for up to two months. Let it overnight in the refrigerator.
When you're ready to assemble a tart just whisk the lemon cream to loosen it and spoon into the tart shell. Serve the tart, or refrigerate until needed.
Sweet Tart Dough and Shell
Yield: 1 tart bottom
Ingredients:
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ½ cup confectioners' sugar
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- one stick +1 tablespoon very cold or frozen unsalted butter
- 1 egg yolks
Preparation:
To make the dough: put the flour, confectioners' sugar and salt in a food processor and pulse a couple of times to combine. Scattered the pieces of butter over the dry ingredients and pulse until the butter is coarsely cut in — you should have some pieces the size of oatmeal flakes and some the size of peas. Stir the yolk, just to break it up, and add a little at a time pulsing after each addition. When the egg is in, process and long pulses — about 10 seconds each — until the dough, which will look granular soon after the egg is added, forms clumps and curds. Just before you reach this stage, the sound of the machine working the dough will change — heads up. Turn the dough out onto a work surface and, very slightly and sparingly, knead the dough just to incorporate any dry ingredients that might have escaped mixing.
To press the dough into the pan: butter a 9-inch fluted tart pan with a removable bottom. Press the dough evenly over the bottom and up the sides of the pan, using all but one little piece of dough, which you should save in the refrigerator to patch any cracks after the crust is baked. Don’t be too heavy-handed — press the crust in so that the edges of the pieces cling to one another, but not so hard that the crust loses its crumbly texture. Freeze the crust for at least 30 minutes, preferably longer, before baking.
To partially or fully baked the crust: center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 375°F.
Butter the shiny side of a piece of aluminum foil and fit the foil buttered side down, tightly against the crust. Since you froze the crust, you can bake it without weights. Put the tart pan on a baking sheet and bake the crust for 25 minutes. Carefully remove the foil. If the crust is puffed press down gently with the back of a spoon. For a partially baked crust, patch the crust if necessary, and transfer the crust to a cooling rack. Keep it in the pan.
To fully baked the crust: bake for another eight minutes or so, until it is firm and golden brown. I dislike lightly baked crust so I often keep the crust in the oven just a little longer. If you do that just make sure to keep a close eye on the crust's progress – it can go from golden to way too dark in a flash. Transfer the tart pan to a rack to crust to room temperature before filling.
To patch a partially or fully baked crust, if necessary: if there are any cracks in the baked crust, patch them with some of the reserved raw dough, as soon as you remove the foil. Slice off a thin piece of the dough, place it over the crack, moisten the edges and very gently smooth the edges to the baked crust. If the tart will not be baked again with its filling, bake for another two minutes or so, just to take the rawness off the patch.
Source: Baking by Dori Greenspan