While my mum committed to cooking a ham, scalloped potatoes and other necessary dishes for Easter dinner, I assured everyone that I would take care of dessert. I waffled between a few items - coconut cream tart, something chocolate-y, madeleines and ice cream. But crunched for time, I pulled up Smitten Kitchen's
Whole Lemon Tart from a long list of bookmarked dessert recipes and got to work.
The base of the tart was '
The great unshrinkable sweet tart shell'. While it worked well and tasted great, I would definitely recommend rolling or at least using less of the dough. At 1am on Sunday morning the dough went into the tart shell right after processing. The resulting crust was a little too thick for my liking, and the edge of the tart became a bit of a shortbread cookie instead of a crust you could cut with a fork. As promised, though, the shell held its shape beautifully.
The lemon filling was easy to prepare. It took about 10 minutes on Sunday morning to slice the Meyer lemons, pick out the seeds and process everything for a minute or so until it was smooth. After 40 minutes or so in the oven, the tart came out to cool and was then chilled in the fridge until we were ready to go.
Everyone enjoyed the tart, particularly the extra punch of lemon. My only complaint was the texture of the filling. Unlike a silky lemon curd, I found the filling a little heavy and almost starchy. I'm guessing the texture would have been better had I allowed the butter and eggs to come to room temperature... So with a couple alterations, this tart is definitely on the list next time dessert is on order and time is short.
