Chocolate Lemon Tart
I seem to be very fond of lemon curd and tarts, and finally decided that my favourite desserts are tarts, particularly fruity ones. It's always nice to sweeten up a day with a good lemon curd, or a lemon meringue pie or a lemon cake topped with creamy cream cheese frosting.
I'm in Nottingham now where the weather is slightly dreary but the sun decided to spring a surprise on us today. So to add on to this little cheer, I decided to spice up the still chilly winter's day with a Lemon Tart incorporating a chocolate crust, inspired by this blog over here. I tweaked my recipe a little to incorporate a different lemon curd and also an adaptation of my favourite pie crust recipe. Wish I had taken better pictures (need to brush up on my photo-taking skills) but here's a picture that I took and tweaked with this cool Poladroid application.
Ingredients:
Crust
2 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
1 block butter (250g)
1/2 cup almond meal (to give it that slightly nutty grainy texture, but you can omit this if you don't want it)
Mix ingredients well together and press into pan. Bake for 30-40mins at 180 degrees C.
Lemon Curd
3 lemons (large), squeezed to make approximately 1 cup lemon juice
Zest of the 3 lemons
4 egg yolks
2 eggs whole
1 vanilla bean (if you can find if not use vanilla essence, 1 teaspoon)
1/4 block butter (60g)
In a saucepan whisk lemon juice, eggs and zest together until smooth. Scrape vanilla bean into mixture and set over stove and cook until creamy and curd-like, thickened and smooth. Remove from heat and stir in butter and mix well.
Pour lemon curd onto pie crust and bake for another 15-20mins or until the top is slightly browned.
Enjoy it, chilled, or warm and served with ice cream!