Lemon Tart (GF)

I have always loved a lemon tart/tarte au citron and now that I’ve been at home for quite a while, I’ve found that I finally have some time and patience to indulge in some gluten-free baking and experimenting.

Obviously if you’re not gluten-free you can either use a standard pastry recipe or buy your own ready-made shortcrust and use the same recipe below for the filling (you can also use the same measurement of plain flour if you don’t want to use cornflour).

Because I’ve used a combination of my own pastry recipe and a slight adaptation of an American recipe for the filling (from the lemon slices on www.rockrecipes.com) there’s a mixture of British measurements and those using American measuring cups.

Ingredients:

For the pastry:

170g Plain Flour (GF – I used Doves Farm)

20g icing sugar

Pinch of salt

1tsp Xanthan Gum

1 egg yolk

90g Melted Unsalted Butter

A tsp or so of cold water to bind together

For the filling:

1 1/2 cups white sugar (yes, I know it looks alot!)

1/4 cup cornflour

4 eggs

Zest of 2 unwaxed lemons

Juice of 3 lemons (about three quarters of a cup)

Serves 6-8 using a 26cm diameter pie dish

Method:

Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees and then make the pastry by melting the butter and then combining all the dry ingredients (the flour, icing sugar, xanthan gum and salt). Add the slightly cooled melted butter and egg yolk to the dry mix and combine, adding the cold water if necessary so that the pastry comes together easily. Form pastry into a ball, cover with cling film and leave in the fridge for 30 mins.

Finely chop the zest of the lemons and place this, along with all of the other filling ingredients (sugar, cornflour, eggs and lemon juice) into a saucepan.

Get the pastry out of the fridge and roll it out as thinly as you can (if it’s really really crumbly just lightly push it together with your hands for it to warm up slightly; don’t worry too much you can always patch it up when it’s in the pie dish).

Place it over the pie dish, allowing the pastry to overlap the sides (incase it shrinks in the oven) and prick the bottom with a fork or knife. Don’t worry if it doesn’t look perfect:

Place on the bottom shelf of the oven on a baking tray (incase the overlapping pastry falls off) for 15 minutes and whilst this is baking warm the filling mixture over the stove gently until the sugar dissolves and then let it cool slightly before the pastry comes out of the oven.

Then whisk the filling mixture before pouring it into the pastry case…

…and place in the oven for 25 minutes. Tidy up the pastry edges and allow to cool.

Once cool, sprinkle with icing sugar and place in the fridge. Serve with berries and cream/creme fraiche. Store in the fridge and it should keep for several days.