Another week is nearly over and we are a little bit closer to Christmas. I have ran out of space on my Christmas Cake order book so I have taken the cakes off my webshop. “My order book is full” something I never thought I would ever say 🙂 Nice feeling but very strange and I hope nobody asks me when I am out and about as I would hate to turn work away but I don’t want to take on too much work. There are so many other things to do on the run up to Christmas that I feel like my head is going to explode.

I am still trying to add some products to my webshop so I really need to get a wriggle on. At the moment, I am checking I have enough packaging, ingredients, cake boards, ribbons, bows, labels, cellophane wrapping and time to bake all the orders which I have on the books for collection on the 23rd December 2018. I have my weeks planned down to the last day to make sure everything is baked on time.

In between all of the Christmas bakes I have orders to do for postal delivery, as and when, they are ordered. I still need to add a last order date for the postal delivery on to the webshop – this is a must so I don’t have orders that I can’t guarantee the delivery of too close to Christmas. This  week I had a few orders to bake for postal delivery and some for collection so I have been in the kitchen all week. I have loads of paperwork to catch up on too so I may have to work late for a couple of nights just to get through it all.

I do have a recipe to share though especially for today for “National Lemon Crème Pie Day” but mine is more a tart than a pie. I made this Lemon Crème Tart recipe up the other day  from a couple of other recipes which I use a lot. This tart consists of a sweet pastry base which is baked blind then a layer of lemon curd topped off with some homemade crème patisserie and grated white chocolate. So easy to make but really nice and refreshing. The crème patisserie cuts through the sharpness of the lemon curd and if you make your own lemon curd then even better – which I don’t as it is cheap enough to buy from the supermarket. Also, please make use of the Conversion Calculator courtesy of The Calculator Site which you can find adjacent to my recipe if you would like to convert my recipe to cups etc.

A Lemon Crème Tart Recipe.

Recipe by V.DaleCourse: Desserts, Recipes, Sweet TreatsCuisine: Sweet treat, dessert
Servings

6

servings
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

35

minutes
Calories

407

kcal
Total time

1

hour 

5

minutes

As the crème patisserie has a versatile flavour which compliments many other flavours you can change the lemon curd for other flavours such as caramel, chocolate spread etc. Whatever you like!!

Ingredients

  • For the sweet pastry:

  • 8oz plain flour

  • 1.5oz icing sugar

  • 5oz butter (softened)

  • For the crème patisserie:

  • 3 egg yolks

  • 5tbsp granulated sugar

  • 1.5tbsp plain flour

  • 0.5tbsp cornflour

  • 300ml milk

  • 1tsp vanilla essence

  • For the filling:

  • 6tbsp lemon curd

  • white chocolate (grated) for decoration.

Directions

  • In a bowl, weigh out the flour, icing sugar and butter.
  • Rub the ingredients together to form a dough.
  • Preheat the oven to Gas 4.
  • Roll out the pastry and cut circles to fit the foil tins.
  • Place the tins on a baking tray.
  • Using baking beans and greaseproof paper, bake the pastry cases blind for 25 minutes until slightly golden at the edges.
  • Remove the baking beans and paper and then bake the cases for a further 5 minutes.
  • Whilst the pastry cases bake make the crème patisserie.
  • In a mixing bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together till creamy.
  • Add the flour and the cornflour.
  • Warm the milk in a pan and then slowly add it to the egg mixture, stirring constantly.
  • Transfer back into the pan and heat the crème patisserie, stirring all the time to prevent burning and mix until it has thickened.
  • Cover the crème patisserie with a layer of clingfilm that is pushed onto the surface of the sauce so there are no air bubbles and this prevents a skin from forming.
  • In the cooled pastry cases, add a spoonful of lemon curd followed by the crème patisserie.
  • Decorate the top of the tart with grated white chocolate.

Notes

  • Nutritionally, one slice of this tart contains 407 calories, 23g total fat (29% daily total fat), 46.4g total carbohydrate (17% daily total carbohydrate), 1g fibre (3% daily fibre) (based on a 2000 calorie diet)

From this table you can see the calories are high for this dessert but it is a rich dessert as in it contains sugar, butter and egg yolks. There is the addition of lemon curd into the recipe too which is high in calories.

The ingredients I have used to make these Mini Lemon Crème Tarts are all free from the following allergens. However, please check the labels carefully for allergens you need to avoid as ingredient brands can vary, and products can change over time.

  • suitable for vegetarians
  • free from peanuts
  • free from tree nuts
  • free from soya
  • free from lupins
  • free from sesame

These tarts could be made gluten free if needed to suit a gluten free diet. I think it would be difficult to change the recipe as in remove the eggs or sugar as both these ingredients are necessary for the making of the crème patisserie.

You could make this as a dessert if you used a large tin to bake the pastry case in rather than mini tart cases. Also, you could change the flavour to a orange or even a lime based tart.

As well as running my homebaking business, this month, I need to go to Christmas shows and assemblies which my children are appearing in. Very busy indeed. This week has been manic but now I need to catch up on the dreaded paperwork otherwise it will be January before I know it and time for the tax return.