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Mary Berry's Tarte au Citron Technical Challenge

Welcome back! This post and the next two posts will reflect challenges that I completed for Pi Day a month ago. Of course, Pi Day is my absolute favorite holiday of the year... And Vincent's and my anniversary. Yes, we did have wedding pie instead of cake. We usually have a Pi Day party every year. It didn't happen this year due to the pandemic. However, I did still manage to bake pies for a few local friends and neighbors.


Today, I am sharing my experience baking Mary Berry's tarte au citron, the technical challenge from Series 2, Episode 2 of Great British Bake Off. Tarte au citron is just French for lemon tart. I absolutely love a good lemon tart, so I made this as one of the two pies for Vincent and me to keep.



When I go back to a bake from one of the early series of GBBO, it is immediately evident that the show creators did not yet know how obscure or technically-difficult they could push the contestants. By my standards, this tarte au citron was incredibly simple. There were only two potential pitfalls. The first was having an under-baked crust. The pie crust is a sweet shortcrust pastry; with just under an ounce of icing sugar and an egg yolk, the crust is slightly richer and rather more malleable than a basic pie crust. The pie crust must be kept cold until it goes in the oven. In order to ascertain that the crust is fully baked and that there are no soggy bottoms, it is important to blind bake the crust. After I laid it out in the tart tin and refrigerated it for 30 minutes, I filled the crust with baking beads (in either aluminum foil or parchment paper) and baked it for about 15 minutes. I then removed the beads and baked it for another 10 minutes. I have a couple of tips for blind baking a crust. First, it helps to use a fork to dent holes in the crust before baking in order to prevent air bubbles from forming in the crust. And second, the best time to trim the edges of the tart is after blind baking with the baking beads but before returning the crust to the oven; at this stage, the crust is set enough that it won't shrink back further, but is still malleable enough that it will not crumble apart when trimmed. 


The filling for the tart is incredibly simple. The ingredients- eggs, heavy cream, sugar, and lemon juice and zest- just need to be mixed together before the filling can be poured in the tart shell.


The second potential pitfall is getting the timing of the bake incorrect. If under-baked, the proteins in the eggs will not unwind and bind to each other, and the custardy filling will not be set. If overbaked, the filling will feel slightly dry and may crack on top.

Once I completely baked and cooled the tart, I decorated it with a layer of icing sugar and a twist of lemon peel. The tart was incredibly tasty. The biting tartness of the filling was balanced out by the sugar on top and the slight sweetness of the crust.



The recipe for Mary Berry's tarte au citron can be found here.

Next time, I will share my take on the double-crusted fruit pie signature challenge from Series 4, Episode 4. Also coming up are an American-style pie and entremets.
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