The sun came out in Vancouver today! ☀️
So it only made sense to bring a little ray of lemon sunshine into my kitchen. Hah, how cheesy am I?
I used my favourite lemon tart recipe (again) from Rosie Daykin's Butter Celebrates Cookbook - with a couple tweaks. I added the most excessive pile of meringue on top of each tart, then toasted them with my blowtorch. I love any reason to pull out the blowtorch, the little pyro in me loves watching the meringue sloooowly toast into crispy perfection. If you don't have one, I highly recommend. It transforms your boring meringue into a work of art, and you can make some pretty damn good creme brulé with that thing too - but that's for another day ;)
Here's the recipe! 👇
Simple Tart Crust original recipe from Butter 1/4 cup butter, room temp 1/4 cup icing sugar 2 egg yolks 1/2 egg (weird but yes) 1 1/4 cups flour 1/2 tsp salt Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Slowly add egg yolks and egg, one at a time, beating until evenly combined. Add flour and salt, and continue mixing until everything is smooth and combined. Shape dough into disk and wrap in saran and chill in the fridge for at least an hour. Remove the disk from the fridge and roll out to be about a 1/4 inch thick. Take a ~3 inch circular cookie cutter or drinking glass to punch out even circles. Press circles into your small tart shells (about 2.5 inches wide). The dough made roughly 8 mini tarts for me. Bake for roughly 10 minutes, checking to see when edges are just turning brown. If you cook too long it will be very crunchy and difficult to bite into. Set aside to cool. Once shells have cooled, remove from tart tins. Lemon Filling 150 ml of condensed milk (half can) 1 egg yolk 1/4 cup lemon juice zest of 1 lemon In a large bowl, whisk together all ingredients (condensed milk, egg yolk, lemon juice, lemon zest) and pour evenly into baked tartlet shells. Bake again for roughly 10 minutes until edges look firm but centre jiggles a tiny bit. Meringue 4 egg whites 1/2 cup sugar 1/8 tsp cream of tartar Fill a saucepan with 1 inch of water and bring to a simmer. In a clean dry bowl of a stand mixer, add eggs and sugar and place on top of steaming water. Whisk until sugar granules have dissolved (about 5 minutes) Move the bowl to a stand mixer fitted with a whisk attachment. Add cream of tartar and whip on high speed until the meringue has nearly tripled in size and is cool to the touch (this can take up to 10 minutes) Top the cooled tartlets filled with the cooked lemon curd. Don't be afraid to pile it VERY high - it makes these little guys look super dramatic. Using a blow torch, torch the meringue until a nice golden brown. That's it. Enjoy!