Cooking for beginners | The classic Lemon Tart recipe

French Connection Dress, on sale

A picnic is such a fun and pleasant way of spending the time outside, especially during summer when the good weather gives me that beautiful vacation mood. Moreover, I love the romantic feel of having a picnic under the shadow of a tree, while relaxing on a blanket, sharing stories and a glass of Rosé.

Since I am not able to be in France right now, I thought why not to bring the charm of having an easy French picnic here? Why French picnic? I love the effortlessly French way to have a picnic: just grab some main ingredients such as baguette, cheese, fruits, a bottle of Rosé and a dessert and you will have the most charming picnic time.

Picnic basket available here and here

Recently I baked for the first time the classic lemon tart and since it was love at first bite I wanted to share the way I made it. The lemon tart is a perfect dessert for summer and a good choice for a French inspired picnic.

The classic lemon tart recipe

I followed the tips and tricks from this and this YouTube videos and below are the ingredients that I used for my version. Even if at the first time it may looks difficult, by following step by step some rules the result may be surprisingly good.

There are 2 main steps for making a tart:

Preparing the pastry shell using the blind baking technique which means to bake the crust before adding the filling. In order to avoid the crust to grow up during the bake time you need to fill it with dry beans or uncooked rice, so that their weight doesn’t allow the crust to grow.
Preparing the filling which will be added after the crust will be partially baked. Then bake together for another 25 minutes.

The ingredients for the pastry shell

Plain flour 190 g
Powdered sugar – I manually grounded 75g of brown sugar. This is the maximum amount of sugar I use for any cookie recipe.
150 g butter – it’s important that the butter be properly chilled, recently taken out of the fridge.
1 egg
rice or dried beans for the blind bake technique

After mixing all the ingredients, wrap it to a cling film and refrigerate it for approximately 1 hour.
Before baking, I filled the pastry shell with the rice (put it on a baking paper) and then baked it for 25-30 min at 170°.
I took the rice off and continue baking for another 10 minutes or until it becomes a little bit crisp.
Cool at room temperature before adding the lemon filling.

The ingredients for the lemon filling

2 whole eggs
2 egg yolks
75 g brown sugar
1/4 salt teaspoon
lemon zest from 2 organic lemons
lemon juice from 2 organic lemons
200g of heavy cream

After the tart shell is cooled at room temperature, pour the lemon filling and bake it for another 30 min at 160°. I used a strain to remove bubbles and zest, otherwise the tart will have a bitter taste. In this YouTube video you can watch the mechanism.
Tip: place the tart pan on a tray into the oven, in case it leaks