Lemon Tart

I tried making a lemon tart. I think it was my biggest baking failure ever. But it was quite delicious.

The recipe is found in America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook and Baking Illustrated. I think I have a made a tart before once or twice, but I don't really remember. (The reason, I am using this blog is to keep better track.)

I made the full tart dough recipe one night, then tried to make mini tarts the second night. I have 6 mini tart pans, and I was able to get 4 tarts out of half of the dough.

I had a lot of trouble with the tart crust. I believe I did the tart recipe correctly, however, my oven was running hot and I didn't have the time to let it cool down enough, so I think that caused the problem. The dough got dark brown very quickly, and was very greasy. When I tried to pull the foil off, it was still soft, even though it looked like it was done, because of the color.

It looked and tasted a like one of those cookies (whose name I cannot remember) that is basically a very buttery and thin cookie that you can mold and shape into bowls or other things before it cools off.

I worked on making 1/3 of the lemon filling recipe after pulling these out of the oven, and I did OK with that, but I didn't keep stirring like I was supposed to and it started to boil a bit, and got thick quicker than it was supposed. I poured it into all 4 pans, even though there was really only enough filling for 2 or 3.

Everything is then baked a little longer. The tart filling looked a little hole-y, but otherwise was OK.

These were not pans with removable bottoms, so I had to work to get the tarts out. Some of them broke because the crust was too moist (greasy, really.)



I think the main problem was the oven temperature. I have the other half of the tart dough in the freezer to try again sometime in the (hopefully) near future. Regardless of the looks, these tarts were really very delicious.