All Sorts: Lemon

The second instalment in my All Sorts series will look at all things lemon. If you had a chance to read my Easter edition, you may have noticed in the Vegan Lemon Truffles section just how much I love lemon and so do lots of my family, so I tend to add it to a lot of my bakes. I have three recipes' to share with you today.

Mother's Day Lemon Curd Jammy Dodgers

First up are my Happy Mother's Day Lemon Curd Jammy Dodgers. I used two recipes for this. Lemon Sherbet Jammy Dodgers from bbcgoodfood.com for the biscuit and buttercream filling and The Hairy Bikers Homemade Lemon Curd recipe. I switched the lemon sherbet for a dusting of icing sugar, purely because I couldn't find any lemon sherbet and didn't have time to go searching for it.

The biscuits were really easy to make. It was my first time trying to mix all the ingredients together in a food processor. I started by blending together the butter, flour and a pinch of salt to make breadcrumbs, then added the sugar and lemon zest, mixing again and finally added the egg and lemon zest, pulsing until it formed bigger clumps. Then it was just a matter of tipping it out onto a floured surface and bringing it together into a ball (not over kneading it) and refrigerating for 30 mins. Using the blender certainly made it less messy but I still prefer the more hands on method.

When rolling out the dough I made the mistake of rolling it a bit too thin, combined with the fact that my oven is terrible and unpredictable, the first batch ended up cooking way too fast and came out nearly completely burned!! After a mini panic attach (this was around 10pm the night before mother's day), I realised I had just enough dough left over to make another small batch. These ones, I watched like a hawk and they turned out pretty ok, not perfect but better for sure. I used a glass and a heart shape cutter to make the biscuit shapes and the wide end of a piping nozzle to cut out the centres.

Next up was the lemon curd. Super easy, everything is mixed together in a heatproof bowl - eggs first (well whisked), then sugar, lemon juice and zest stirred in and finally adding the butter and heating over some simmering water, stirring until butter melts, then whisking continuously as it cooks for another 10-12 mins...or so says the recipe. I was making this first thing on the Saturday morning before work. After 15 mins it still wasn't thickening up like it should have and I had to be at work in 15 mins. Ended up leaving my fiancé whisking away as I ran out the door. As you might have noticed, leaving things to the last minute is kind of my specialty.

For the lemon buttercream filling, some of the lemon curd is put together with the butter and icing sugar, mashed up and then mixed with an electric hand mixer until smooth. When I was piping it around the edge of the biscuits the only piping bag I had was a zip lock plastic bag, usually fine but this one had a funny fold in the bottom and so the piping came out a bit all over the place. The same happened with piping the lemon curd but once the top was on they looked great.

I left them in the fridge overnight for the filling to set properly and dusted them with some icing sugar in the morning before popping them in a glass jar I bought in Dunnes. Annoyingly, when washing the jar out I dropped the lid and it smashed all over the place so I had to improvise with a circle of greaseproof paper and a paper doily tied on with some string.

Result = happy Mammy.

Tarte au Citron

My lemon tart recipe - or Tarte au Citron if you're being fancy - comes from the cook book Pâtisserie at Home by Will Torrent. This recipe is really easy and oh so delicious but I find the quantity of ingredients makes far too much - enough for two tarts - so I half it. This is probably because my tart tin is too shallow but I think any thicker and it would be too much to eat. The recipe calls for 9 eggs, 390g sugar, juice and zest of 5 lemons and 275ml double/heavy cream. By halving the recipe, I find it takes a little of the extreme lemon tang out of it and so can be enjoyed by those who aren't quite as lemon mad as I am. I also use normal cream instead of double cream - to make myself feel like I'm not really serving up a heart attack on a plate!! What makes this recipe so straightforward is that there's no pre-cooking of the filling mixture. It's all mixed together in a bowl; Eggs and Sugar first to combine, then lemon juice and zest, then stir in the cream, pour into a jug and you're ready to pop it into your pre-cooked tart case and bake in the oven for 30-40 mins. The tricky part, I find, is not over baking it, particularly because my oven is so unreliable temperature wise. You want to take it out of the oven when it is set in the centre but still has a bit of a wobble, as it will continue to cook after you take it out of the oven. If you over bake it the top will crack, ruining the appearance. Still tastes great though!!

I have used a few different bases for this; shop bought shortcrust pastry, homemade Pâte Sucrée (as specified in the recipe) and a crumble base made with broken up digestive biscuits. All the bases went really well with it and it's always more satisfying to make your own (if time allows) so I would definitely recommend the Pâte Sucrée. The crumble base was lovely too but made it a bit heavier.

The first time I made it I used the quantities suggested in the book and had loads left over so poured the rest into these little heart moulds and gave them to my brother and sister-in-law. They said they were really nice with a digestive biscuit but super filling! Could make a cute little desert though!

I have also made a lemon and meringue tart, which I was shown how to make by one of my best friends almost Mother-in-law a few summers ago. It's a lovely but frustrating recipe because it involves cooking the eggs, lemon juice and zest on the hob and adding some cornflour to thicken. Simple enough but I just can't seem to get it to cook without the eggs splitting and leaving it speckled with bits of egg white. At least its covered with meringue though so you can hide the mistakes. I will always know its there though.

As this recipe doesn't use any butter or cream but lemon comes through very strong so you need to go easy on the lemon zest.

These are just a few of my lemony treats. Lemon and Ginger macarons are my favourite flavour and I'll be on the look out for lots more recipes to share with you in the future.

Thanks for reading x