Mini Lemon Tarts

I’m at it again with the mini desserts, I don’t know why. Certainly I could make full size desserts, it’s just that I find these mini’s so darn cute. I knew that I wanted to make lemon tarts today because the wintertime yields the most wonderful and fragrant varieties of citrus. I decided to hit up my local Costco in my quest for the fruit, and lo and behold they had the most gorgeous boxes of Meyer lemons.  I imagine most people wouldn’t react to fruit with such glee, but I have a hard time finding these; and when I do, they’re usually small and unattractive.

So, what you may ask is a Meyer lemon. They are a cross between a lemon and a Mandarin orange.  Their skins are thinner than your garden variety lemon, and the juice is sweeter. The Meyer lemon has less acid, a very floral scent and their season is usually between January and May. And by golly, I just love them.

I should point out, if you make these tarts in the mini muffin tin, please make sure you spray the tin sufficiently so the tarts will release easily. I also made some in 4 inch tart pans, and those were easier to release.

Anyway, I still have tons of these lemons left so you guessed it…Mama’s Gotta Bake somethin’ new tomorrow. I’m thinking muffins.

Mini Lemon Tarts

Mini Lemon Tarts

Tart Crust

From The Silver Palate Cookbook

• 1 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup fine granulated sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 10 tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter, cold
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2-3 teaspoons cold water

Directions

1. Sift flour, sugar and salt into mixing bowl. Cut chilled butter into pieces into the bowl. Using your fingertips, quickly rub the butter and dry ingredients together until the mixture resembles coarse meal
2. Stir egg yolks, vanilla and water together and add to the flour-butter mixture and blend in using a fork. Shape dough into a ball.
3. Place the ball of dough on a pastry board. With the heel of your hand, smear about 1/4 cup of dough away from you into a 6-8 inch smear; repeat until all the dough has been dealt with. Scrape dough together; reform into a disk and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for about 2 hours.
4. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Spray a 24-cup mini muffin tin with cooking spray well so the crusts will not stick to the pan.  Roll the dough out between 2 sheets of wax paper. Using a 2″ round cookie cutter, cut circles and tuck the dough into muffin cups, pressing with your fingertips so that the dough comes up the sides of the cup.
5. Using a fork prick the bottoms of each dough cup. Then cut 3″ squares of foil and press them into the inside of the dough cups. Use pie weights, beans or rice or even pennies to weigh down the foil. 
6. Bake the crusts for about 10 minutes. Remove them from the oven and take out the foil and pie weights and then return the crusts to the oven for another 5-9 minutes until the crusts are lightly golden on the edges.  Everyone’s oven is different so you really have to keep an eye on the crusts. It’s not so much about the time, but how they visually look. You don’t want an undercooked dough, and you don’t want the crust too dark as it will be very dry and crumbly.

Press the dough rounds into the mini muffin tin

This is what it looked like with the foil and pie weights

Meyer Lemon Filling

Adapted from Joy of Baking

• 5 ounces of cream cheese at room temperature
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice (2-3 lemons)
• 1 tablespoon grated lemon zest

1. Reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F.
2. In a food processor or the bowl of an electric mixer, place the cream cheese and process until smooth. Add the sugar and process until incorporated. Add the eggs and process until thoroughly combined. Add the lemon juice and zest and process until well blended and smooth.
3. Using a tablespoon, I spooned the mixture into the individual tarts, filling to the top.
4. I baked the mini tarts for about 10 minutes.  The tarts are done when the filling is set. It took my oven about 10 minutes.
5. Let cool for about 15 minutes, then gently remove them from the pan.  I sprayed the pan well so the tarts released very easily.

You can garnish the tarts with fresh whipped cream and a wedge of lemon if you like. The recipe makes 24 mini tarts, or one-9″ tart.

I love my Meyer lemons

Recipe: Intermediate 

You can view this recipe and others at Crumbs and Chaos.

{photos by freutcake}

Mini-Meyer Lemon Tarts- adapted from this recipe
Makes 12 tarts

For the crust:

1 stick unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 cups flour
pinch of kosher salt

For the filling:

3 extra-large eggs at room temperature
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 tablespoons grated lemon zest
1/3 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
1/2 cup flour
Confectioners’ sugar, for dusting

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Spray a muffin tin with nonstick spray. For the crust, cream the butter and sugar until light in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Combine the flour and salt and, with the mixer on low, add to the butter until just mixed. Dump the dough onto a well-floured board and gather into a ball. Divide the dough evenly between 12 muffin cups and press in bottom and partially up the sides. Chill.

Bake the crust for 10 to 12 minutes, until very lightly browned. Let cool on a wire rack. Leave the oven on.

For the filling, whisk together the eggs, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, and flour. Pour over the crusts leaving 1/8″ from the top and bake for 10-15 minutes, until the filling is set. Let cool to room temperature. Use a butter knife to cut around edges and help remove tarts. Dust with powdered sugar and enjoy!

]]> http://bronniebakes.com/2011/03/24/mini-lemon-meringue-pies/ Wed, 23 Mar 2011 20:38:50 +0000 Bronniebakes http://bronniebakes.com/2011/03/24/mini-lemon-meringue-pies/ I adore lemon curd, and after chatting to a friend at the party on Saturday and eating the lemon mud cake, we started talking about how much we loved lemon tarts. Now, I’ve never made a lemon tart before, but I had a heap of lemons that I needed to use, so thought, why not step things up a notch and make mini lemon meringue pies??! (I’m not a sharer… so I decided against making one large pie   )

First things first and I got set to make my pastry. Having never made pastry before, I wasn’t sure how I’d go, but it was really quite simple.

I sifted 1.5 cups plain flour and 2 tablespoons icing sugar and then added 125g unsalted butter and the seeds from 2 vanilla pods and mixed the butter with my fingers to make fine breadcrumbs.

I then cooled some water with some ice and added 1/4 cup to my mixture (obviously taking the ice cubes out ) and mixed everything together.

After mixing everything up, I rolled the pastry between two sheets of baking paper and grabbed my circle cutter to cut out rounds to fit my tins.

It was then time to get out our tins – I have these baker’s secret tins with removeable bases…..makes things so easy to remove the pastry.

It was ‘wear your footy jumper’ day at the gym creche.

You might be wondering where Molly was? Well… she had the hugest tantrum after I dressed her in her footy jumper because it wasn’t ‘pretty’ and she was in the background screaming her head off

‘Pweeetttyyy…. No no Pwettttttty’

I had to restrain her in the highchair again

Next up I put my ear muffs on and lined the tins with the pastry and put a circle of baking paper over the top with some baking beans. Baking beans add weight to the pastry to keep it to the shape of the tin. If you didn’t have some weight for the first part of the cooking, the pastry would puff up and then you wouldn’t be able to fill your tarts.

I baked it in the oven on about 180 degrees for 10-15mins and then removed the beans and baking paper and baked for another 10-15mins until golden brown.

It was then time to make my lemon curd, so I got out my lemons and went to work grating the zest.

I only needed 3 teaspoons for the curd, but grated it all up for another recipe (for another day!).

Next I needed 185ml of lemon juice

Whisk this up over a medium heat with:

1/4 cup cornflour

1/4 cup plain flour; and

1 cup of castor sugar

Once it thickens up, reduce the heat and whisk for another minute. Turn off the heat and whisk in 40g unsalted butter, 6 egg yolks and spoon the curd into the pastry tarts.

Next it was time to heat the oven to 220 degrees (fan forced) and wipe my mixing bowl and whisk attachment with alcohol in preparation for making the meringue.

I started with 6 egg whites and once they had reached soft peaks I added in 1.5cups of castor sugar and kept beating until they were glossy and thick. Finally I added 1/2 teaspoon cornflour and gave it another quick mix before transferring the mixture to my piping bag (any excuse to get this out ) and piping the meringue onto the tarts.

Time to put them in the oven for about 5 minutes (until they start to turn brown). And then set aside to cool down.

I couldn’t wait and had to break one apart straight away to try

(The lemon curd shouldn’t ooze out if they have been left to set and cool down, but obviously I’m too impatient!)

Thanks to www.bakingwithfrench.blogspot.com for the recipe and inspiration!