Everytime I walk into Chef's Warehouse or Victoria's Basement, I always somehow convince myself I NEED a new whisk or cake ring... or the very pretty cookie cutters. It's bad.
Anyhow, it just so happens that this week in LCB, we made little lemon meringue tartlets. Yay! I get to use my blowtorch.
This recipe is excellent. The tarts were divine, nice "short" pate sablé and delicious lemon curd thats just the right consistency, topped with a wicked italian meringue that's not too sweet.
The Previous Lemon Meringue Tart I made was a little lighter because the curd was made with whole eggs instead of yolks only. To me, both are equally delightful but this tart I consider an improvement.
The real difference is the end result of using a torch and oven to colour the meringue. The oven was much harder to control and easier to burn. In the end, it did not produce results as brillant as the torch.
So, the torch has proved to be a good investment. Maybe next time, I will use my pretty fluted cookie cutter to cut the pastry, so I don't feel bad about having bought that too.
Ingredients
Pate Sablé
150g Butter
95g Icing Sugar
Few drops vanilla essence
250g Bakers Flour
Pinch of salt
30g Almond Meal
60g Eggs
Lemon Filling
200g Butter
125g Sugar
150g Egg Yolks
125ml Lemon Juice
Italian Meringue
250g Egg Whites
500g Caster Sugar
175ml Water
Icing Sugar
100g Melted White Chocolate
Method
1. Make pate sablé. Cream butter and sugar. Add vanilla and eggs. Add flour, almond meal and salt. Do not knead to much. This ensures gluten does not develop and the pastry remains short. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.
2. Make lemon filling. Boil sugar and lemon juice. Take off flame, temper eggs into mixture. Put mixture back on stove and cook till it thickens. Take of heat and whisk in butter. Refrigerate.
3. Roll out pate sablé. Line pastry tin (you could make little ones or a big one to share). Bake blind at 190˚c for around 10-15 minutes depending of the size of the tin you use.
4. Brush melted white chocolate on cooled tart cases before filling with lemon curd. (This helps pastry stay crunchy and not turn soggy). Fill with lemon curd.
5. Make italian meringue. Boil sugar and water till 110˚c, start whisking egg white in machine. When sugar solution is at soft crack stage (116˚c). Add sugar solution to egg whites in a very slow stream while machine continues whisking eggs. Keep whipping till meringue is cold and stiff.
6. Top tartlettes with piped meringue, sprinkle with icing sugar and place in hot oven or glaze with torch till it colours.
