Lemon Tarts

I wanted a balance with my chocolate tarts and decided to create this by making some lemon tarts. This recipe was from the book Muffins, Scones and Teatime Treats. 

I made the pastry the day before to give myself less to do, the recipe doesn't state this is necessary stating it requires only 20mins in the fridge. 

The pastry is made by combining plain flour, salt, butter, caster sugar, lemon rind, egg yolk and water together. Start with just crumbling the flour and butter and then add the remaining ingredients together. I then wrapped this in cling film and placed it in the fridge overnight along with the other varieties of pastry I'd made that day. 

Pastry wrapped and in the fridge.

When we were ready to start the following day I commisioned my mum to make the pastry cases while I made the filing. To do this she carefully rolled out the pastry and cut them using 8cm round cutters. This was the right size to fit in a cupcake tin, which is what we used to bake them. She found that the pastry easily made 24 cases, in fact we ended up making 30 due to having left over pastry and filling. 

The pastry cases were pricked with a folk and then baked for 10mins, unusually they did only require this length of time to bake and therefore the timing was correct. 

To make the filling I combined cream cheese, sugar and egg yolks together until smooth. I then added lemon juice and condensed milk beating this until the whole mixture was well combined. 

Smooth, light mixture ready to be spooned into cases.

I filled the cases by adding 2 teaspoons of mixture to each one and then these were baked in the oven. The recipe stated they should be baked for 5 mins but we started off with 10 and this seemed to be the perfect length of time. 

These were served on a 2 tiered cake stand.

Lemon tarts ready to be eaten

Verdict: I gave the tarts 7/10, I thought that the filling was really nice and light, however, it didn't taste strongly enough of lemon. The first taste I got was condensed milk and then the lingering after taste was lemon. I wanted to be hit a little more strongly. Gary also gave the tarts 7/10 stating that they were nice and refreshing, however, more lemon was needed. I also got my mum to guest mark these and she gave them 8/10 stating that they were creamy and smooth, her favourite so far but they were nothing special. Overall these tarts received a mark of 22/10, they were OK but definitely didn't create a wow. 

I have to apologise for the lack of pictures of this recipe, I forgot to take many as I was carrying out the various steps!!