Happy June to everybody! It’s almost half a year gone, and this is already my twenty-third recipe in 2026. I am almost done with work, and I am looking forward to having a lot more time to do the baking and cooking that I want.
Who doesn’t love tarts like I do? I love to eat them and I love to bake them. Tarts can be savoury or sweet (I love both) and I love having them with coffee. These pastries and desserts are the most clever invention of mankind of all times.
Here’s an experiment with a familiar recipe that I have had before using different proportions of the same ingredients. The verdict is out – so read on!
Ingredients: (Tart Pastry)
- Egg yolk: 3
- Vanilla seeds: from 1 pod
- Plain flour: 250g
- Icing sugar: 50g
- Unsalted butter: 125g
Method: (Tart Pastry)
- Beat egg yolks and vanilla seeds in a mixer till light and creamy.
- Sieve plain flour and icing sugar into a mixing bowl.
- Rub butter into flour mixture.
- Gently combine egg mixture with flour mixture. Knead to form dough.
- Place in cling wrap and chill for 1 hr.
- Preheat oven at 180 degrees Celsius.
- Remove dough from fridge. Roll out to 3mm thick.
- Line a 25-cm pastry tin with pastry dough, carefully kneading dough into sides of tin and pushing the dough upwards till it is a few mm above the tin.
- Blind bake for 12min.
- Remove blind baking beans and bake another 10min till golden brown.
- Leave to cool for 10 min.
Ingredients (Lemon Custard):
- Lemon rind: 2 lemons
- Lemon juice: 150ml (approximately 2 lemons)
- Caster sugar: 90g
- Crème fraîche: 60ml
- Egg: 4
- Egg yolk: 3
- Icing sugar: 2 tbsp
Method (Lemon Custard):
- Beat lemon rind, lemon juice & caster sugar together for 1min.
- Gradually add in crème fraîche & beat till combined.
- Beat in whole eggs, 1 at a time. Then beat in egg yolks.
- Pour custard into pastry case. Bake 20min till set. Cool then chill.
- Dust with icing sugar to serve.
Disclaimer:
- I wanted to give this recipe a try even though I already have a recipe for lemon tarts which I did back in March 2025. This recipe here uses more whole eggs, less egg yolks & crème fraîche, while the previous one uses less whole eggs, more egg yolks, heavy cream instead of as crème fraîche, well as butter in the custard itself. Using less yolks is supposed to make the custard lighter and more spreadable, while having more yolks is supposed to make the custard richer, denser and yellower. While the colour was indeed richer in my previous recipe, I cannot really tell the difference otherwise, except for the fact that the custard in this recipe cracks more easily while it chilled in the fridge (see the lines on the surface of the custard). Maybe because the previous recipe uses butter and cream, so it’s not so ‘dry’ and hence not so easy to crack as well. My final verdict? To use the previous recipe if I need to keep it overnight in the fridge, but if not and serving on the same day, both recipes work just as well as each other.
Serving:
1 x 25-cm tart (about 8 dessert slices)
