Tarte au citron

This is a very simple tart to make, as long as you follow the recipe correctly and use an electric scale. At first you may think the recipe contains A LOT of lemon, but there really isn't any point in having a lemon tart unless you get the full blast of its flavour! 

Ingredients

• 200g plain flour + extra for dusting
• 30g icing sugar
• 95g unsalted butter
• 1 large egg
• 1 tbsp cold water
• 4 lemons
• 120ml double cream
• 250g caster sugar
• 5 large eggs

1. Mix flour and icing sugar together in a large bowl
2. Cut butter into small chunks and add to the flour, pulse if you have an electric blender, if not, rub the ingredients together with your finger tips until they resemble a breadcrumb structure
3. Make a well in the middle of the mixture and add the egg to it and combine ingredients with you hand, if it doesn't quite stick together, add 1 tbsp of water and try again. Try not to overwork the dough as the butter will melt and turn into a sticky mess
4. Lightly dust work surface with flour and gently roll out the pastry dough to about 3mm thick
5. Put rolled out pastry into a 23cm fluted tart tin and very lightly press the pastry against the sides, don't worry about the extra pastry hanging off the sides of tin for now
6. Evenly prick small holes across the entire base of pastry and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes
7. Pre-heat oven to 180 degrees C/160 fan
8. Take pastry out of fridge and line with parchment paper and fill baking beans/rice
9. Bake the pastry for 5 minutes and take it out of the oven, use a sharp knife to trim off the excess pastry to form a perfect shape
10. Return pastry to oven and bake for another 10 minutes (check if base is dry, if not return to oven for another 3 minutes)
11. Remove baking beans and parchment paper and bake for another 5-10 minutes, or until the base is golden
12. Take pastry case out of oven to cool slightly, lower oven temperature to 170 degrees C (150 fan) and start preparing filling
13. Mix eggs, caster sugar and cream together and whisk until smooth
14. Add the juice and zest from 4 lemons to the eggs and whisk again until everything has combined 
15. Pour mixture into a jug
16. Return pastry back into oven and then pour the filling in, this way, the filling is less likely to spill than attempting to return pastry case with filling together into oven
17. Bake for 25-35 minutes, it's done when the sides are set and the middle wobbles slightly when tapped gently on the side
18. Cool completely on bench top
19. Dust with icing sugar and serve!