This wonderful, elegant, smooth, silky and tart-instead-of-sweet pie is a beautiful addition to the desert table or perfect company for an afternoon tea.
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This pie is one of my brother’s favorites. I come from a family that has always baked and cooked, but my brother took it to another level. My brother is now a successful engineer, busy engineering things I have difficulty comprehending the first time he explains them to me. He is also a classically French-schooled chef. He holds the French techniques in great value, and told me to make a lemon pie the traditional way. And so I did.
Jump to Recipe
The biggest difference with some of the other fruit pies: less sugar. Even though it is still a sweet pie, it does not taste as sweet as some of the others you find elsewhere. This is the classical French version, and it is all focused on lemon. You will also use a pâté sucré, or sweet pastry crust, which has a hint of sweetness and is nice and crispy in a buttery way. The recipe is from James Peterson.
Blind baking
This recipe requires a blind bake. This is nothing more than baking the pie, without any filling, on a relatively low temperature. It ensures the dough is already partially cooked, and it prevents that a liquid filling creates what some call a ‘soggy bottom’. In that horrific scenario, the filling oozes through the bottom of the dough while baking, it makes the crust wet and soggy instead of nice and crisp and prevents the pie of baking through and holding its shape.
The solution is baking beans in a blind bake. To weigh the dough down and prevent it from bubbling up, you use real beans or artificial ones. For a good end result, I recommend you use ceramic beans. They stay nice and clean, and you can use them over and over. Use this link to find a good set. I use similar ones, and have been for as long as I have baked.
The Mixers
In this recipe, you use both a stand mixer and a hand mixer. You may by now know of my addiction to KitchenAid, so without any shame, I plug my KitchenAid stand mixer once again, as well as the hand mixer. I just bought the hand mixer as a present for my sister-in-law who immediately turned ingredients into cookies.
Enough talking, let’s get baking.
Tarte au Citron with pâté sucré
Equipment
- Large and small bowls
- Stand mixer with paddle tool
- Hand mixer
- Scale
- Knives or dough cutter
- Blind-baking beans
- Fine sieve
- Cling wrap
- Pie or cake form, 24 centimeters or 9.5 inches
- Parchment paper, tin foil
Ingredients
The sweet crust or pâté sucré
- 140 grams butter in small cubes
- 65 grams powdered sugar
- 1 egg cold
- 1 egg yolk
- 125 grams cake flour
- 125 grams all-purpose flour
- ½ tsp salt
For the lemon filling
- 3 eggs
- 2 egg yolks
- 150 grams granulated sugar
- 350 milliliter double or heavy cream
- lemon zest of 1 lemon
- 6 tbsp lemon juice (roughly 3 lemons)
- Powdered sugar (optional)
Instructions
Make the sweet crust
- Using the stand mixer and the paddle tool, beat the butter and powdered sugar until light and creamy. Add the egg and egg yolk and incorporate well. Switch off the mixer.
- Using a fine sieve, add the salt, cake flour and all-purpose flour. Start mixing on the lowest setting to incorporate the flour and mix for half a minute on medium speed.
- When all the ingredients are incorporated, press the dough in a flat disk, wrap in cling wrap and leave to cool in the refrigerator for at least 30 minutes.
Make the pie
- Preheat the oven to 150°C/300°F.
- Grab the chilled and rested dough from the fridge, and roll out with a floured rolling pin on a moderately floured work space on your counter top. Work quickly to prevent the dough getting too warm. Roll out to where the dough is 5 centimeters or 2.5 inches larger than the top of your pie form.
- Carefully press the rolled out dough in the corners and edges of your pie form: lift the excess and press it in the edge while you lower and go around all of the pan. If you use the wavy pan, make sure your dough covers all of the shape. Ensure the dough is equally thick all around. You can use a little ball of dough to press without damaging the dough.
- Now, we bake blind. For that, you cover the dough with parchment paper. The easiest way to make sure your baking beans reaches all of the nooks and crannies is to crumble it up and unfold it again. Fill the pie form generously with the baking beans by pouring them on the parchment paper. Place in the pre-heated oven and bake for 15 minutes.
- Remove the baking beans after 15 minutes by lifting up the corners of the parchment paper. The pie looks more solid but a bit shiny because of the butter. Place the pie, without filling, in the oven again and bake for another 15 minutes. Do not extend this period to prevent the pie from over-baking. If the edges brown too fast, cover the edge with tin foil. Take out of the oven and place to the side.
- In a large bowl, mix the eggs, egg yolks and sugar with the hand mixer until the mixture turns lighter, in about 2 minutes.
- Add the double or heavy cream, lemon juice and lemon zest and mix to incorporate.
- Pour the mixture in the pre-baked pie. Top tip: place the pie in the oven and extend the rack. This prevents you walking with a pie with a liquid filling and makes sure you don't spill.
- Bake the pie for 45 minutes until the custard mixture doesn't move anymore when you slowly shake it. But be careful not to overbake, as the custard will turn brown.
- Let the pie cool at room temperature, and place in the fridge at least one hour before you serve it. Dust generously with powdered sugar.