Lemon Tartlets

With my husbands birthday coming up, and his severe lack of a sweet tooth, my only option was to bake these little lemon tartlets as his birthday 'cake.' They turned out to be more work than expected, but the flavour is tart and delicious.

I made the pastry first. No photos because I've rubbed margarine into flour a million times already this year! I had 12 little tins to line, but the recipe (see below) actually failed to tell me how thick to roll it to.

The photos above were my first attempt - but as you can see, the pastry is sitting too low in the case. I figured, as soon as I try to fill that with the filling, it'll just pour over the sides (something I should not have worried about.)

Unfortunately, by the time I'd lined all these cases, I'd overworked the dough too much from rolling too many times so I couldn't re-roll and resize the cases. There was only one thing for it - make a new batch of dough:

Much better sized dough

So, 2 batches of dough made, it was time to move onto the filling. This also turned into a repeat exercise because one batch of the recipe below only filled 6 of the cases. I actually baked 6 tartlets to confirm the lumpy mixture would actually set before I made a second batch of filling and baked the remaining six cases.

The mixture was horribly lumpy - I was worried the lemon juice (I used the rind of a whole lemon and the juice of half for each batch of filling) had reacted with the eggs, but once in the oven the butter melted down and it cooked evenly.

I skipped dusting icing sugar over the tarts because of my husbands lacking sweet tooth, and instead enjoyed these tart tartlets. Some are a little browned, and I think they're ugly and uneven, but feedback from work colleagues has been positive, and I think they're delicious too.

Lemon Tarlets

50g butter

50g sugar

1 egg, beaten

grated rind & zest of 1/2 lemon

10g icing sugar

Short crust pastry

100g plain flour

1.25ml/1/4 tsp salt

50g margarine

flour for rolling

Set the oven to 200. To make the pastry, sift the flour and salt into a bowl, then rub in the margarine until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add enough cold water to form a stiff dough. Press the dough together with your fingertips, rollout and use to line 12 7.5cm/3inch patty tins.

Cream the butter and sugar together until pale and fluffy. Beat in the egg. Add the lemon rind and juice. Fill the pastry cases with the mixture. Bake for 15-20minutes until set & leave to cool. Sift the icing sugar over the tartlets.