I wanted to make a tres francais fancy dessert to share with my mama and fam for Mother’s Day. While I have enjoyed many a pastry shop tart, I had never made one myself and was frankly a little intimidated.
My sister introduced me to this way less scary tart shell recipe, and I suddenly felt much braver (David Lebovitz’, recipe below). The recipe allows you to skip the stress of keeping your butter ice cold and pastry cutting, which for me and my overall warm body temp always felt like a race against the clock. Instead, you plop butter, oil, water, sugar and salt all together in an oven-safe bowl and set that dudette in the oven til it’s bubbly and slightly browning. At this point, you carefully remove this magical potion and quickly stir in the flour til it comes together as a nice dough. It cools a bit and then you hand press it into a tart pan, prick it a million times with a fork, and bake til golden brown! You can use a sharp knife before baking to cut off excess dough to get that very cool, tidy look of a patisserie tarte. ER Voila! You are now French!
With the shell confidently baked, I decided to make the NYT lemon curd for filling, and topped it with almond Italian meringue.
For extra showiness, I added some edible flowers to the top (marigolds and lavender from my dads garden).
Buttery crust, tart filling, and sweet meringue- happy mamas day to me!