Preheat your oven to 180ºC

Sweet Pastry

You can make these a day before, make sure you store them in a air tight container.

Ingredients

• 1 egg
• 1/2c caster sugar
• 125g butter, softened
• 1c flour, plus a little for kneading
• pinch of salt (if using unsalted butter)

Method

In a food processor, blend the egg and the sugar.

Add the softened butter and pulse until smooth.

Gradually incorporate the sieved flour and salt then pulse until the mixture comes together in a ball. (If the mixture does not form a ball with the 1c of flour keep adding flour, a little at a time, until it does.)

Remove the dough from the processor and knead a little so it is well combined and has a glossy appearance.

Wrap the dough in cling film and refrigerate for at least an hour.

Roll pastry to approx 4mm thick. If you do not have round cutters to make the tart shells use a glass with a thin lip. It may take a few tries to find the right size glass for your tin. I make the dough large enough to go a third of the way up the muffin tin when placed inside.

Lightly grease a muffin tin then line with pastry rounds. Refrigerate the pastry shells (in the tin) for a further 30mins or in the freezer for 10mins.

Blind bake the tart shells for 15 minutes.

Lemon Curd

Ingredients

• 4 egg yolks, separate the yolks from the whites and keep the whites for the meringue
• 100g caster sugar
• 100g butter, chilled and cut into cubes
• 2 lemons, juice and rind

Method

Whisk the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl.

Add the lemon zest and juice.

Place the bowl over a saucepan of simmering water (bain-marie) and gradually add the butter whilst stirring the curd. The curd will thicken after approximately 20 minutes; remove the bowl from the bain-marie and set aside to cool.

Fill the tarts with the lemon curd and bake for a further 5 minutes at 160ºC (if the oven is too hot the lemon curd will boil over).

Meringue (prepare once the lemon tarts are cooked)

If you don’t want meringue on your tarts skip this step, you could dust some icing sugar on them instead.

Ingredients

• 4 egg whites, at room temperature (The egg whites need to be at room temperature to meringue well.)
• 100g caster sugar
• pinch of cream of tartar

Method

Beat the whites in an electric beater until stiff. Add the cream of tartar, beat, then gradually add the sugar and continue beating for 5 minutes.

Pipe the meringue mix onto the lemon tarts and finish in a hot oven (200ºC) to colour the meringue.

Original recipe sourced from: http://ourkitchen.fisherpaykel.com/2009/06/little-lemon-meringue-tarts/