Tarte au Citron

Once again I must admit to being influenced by The Great British Bake Off. As an adoring admirer of Mary Berry, I finally bit the bullet and attempted her Tarte au Citron for the first time. I was very interested in the idea of trying out a new sweet shortcrust pastry recipe having relied on the Crazy Kitchen shortcrust recipe for so long.

Having watched the episode of the Great British Bake Off where they made the Tarte au Citron, I was very conscious of the fact that it would be very, very easy to over-bake the lemon filling. In fact this was very much the case for my first attempt at making this tarte. As you can see from the photo, the filling has started to separate from the pastry, and in fact in the centre of the tart there was a fairly large crack in the filling. This is a wonderfully tart and flavoursome lemon filling, which is one of the tastiest recipes I've ever tried.

Mildly successful Tarte au Citron

Again undeterred I decided to keep trying to make this tarte successfully. It is really easy to over-bake this tarte and I have done so several times. I have also come across problems with pouring the filling into the pastry case; sometimes it just overflows and other times simply sliding the tarte into the oven causes some filling to spill over and to make the pastry soggy, which can cause the pastry to collapse. This means that you can lose some of the tarte when you try to remove it from the tin after baking. However, this doesn't take away from the delicious flavour of the tarte, and it has always gone down very well with L, my housemate, and several other friends of mine.

Beckie.