Tag: sweet

“What can one person do?” whizzed pass me, displayed on the side of the local bus, next to the picture of smiling Nelson Mandela. I have heard these words many times before but they suddenly seemed more powerful now than ever before.

I have been struggling to write anything lately.A craftsmanship of turning thoughts into words is something I always admired. It has never really been a skill I’ve owned  but it became even harder to tell stories about food while what is happening around the world makes me so sad.

How can you talk about baking while at the same time you dread to put the morning news on and while the recent events make you feel so terribly helpless?

So what can one person do when life gives you more and more lemons and the world is turning into a sour place?

Make a lemon tart.And pass a slice to everyone around you. One person, in fact, can’t fix the world overnight, but what one person can do is to spread more kindness and maybe change another person’s life.And who knows, maybe that person will spread the love even further and changes someone else’s life too. Good deeds are contagious you know and I believe (although it might seem a little naive) we’ll wake up in a better place one day, filled with tolerance, a place where things like your gender, colour of your skin, what language you speak, who you love and who you are won’t matter.Because they simply DON’T.This is the world I’m going to fight for.

Let’s be the change that we want to see in the world. That’s what we all can do.

LEMON TART

Ingredients for the pastry:

• 250 g plain flour
• 125 g butter, cold
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 tablespoons icing sugar
• vanilla beans, removed from 1 vanilla pot (optional)
• 1-2 tablespoons of cold water (or more necessary)

Sift the flour, add the butter and rub it into the flour with your fingertips until the dough will resemble coarse crumbles. Add the egg yolk, sugar, vanilla beans, water  and quickly knead. If it feels too dry, add some more water, if it’s too sticky, add a little bit more flour. Form the dough into a ball, flatten into a disc using palm of your hand (it will roll out easier), wrap in cling film and cool in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 160C

Removing the dough from the fridge roll it out and line a 24 cm round tray. Prick the pastry with the fork and place in the fridge for additional 30 minutes. After that time take it out the fridge, place baking paper on the top of the pastry followed by baking beans to keep it in place while in the oven. Bake for 15 minutes. Then remove the paper and bake an additional 15 minutes until lightly browned.

Ingredients for the lemon filling:

• 5 eggs
• 100g caster sugar
• 1-2 tablespoons honey (optional)
• 150 ml double cream
• 100 ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
• grated zest of 2 lemons

Place all the ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well until smooth.

Transfer the lemon filling onto the pastry. Bake 30-35 minutes until the top of the tart has set. Leave to cool, serve at room temperature or chilled.

Serve with icing sugar, fruit or ice cream or even better – all three 🙂

Spread the love,

Bea
xxx