I love watching French YouTube baking videos. I get great ideas and I find there are some very good French cooking channels. One channel I came across recently was the channel Charles & Ava. The first video I watched was for a Tart au Citron that featured a lemon crust, a lime jelly, a lemon cream and a yuzu ganache cream. The recipe seemed intriguing, so I tried it a few weeks ago.
I wasn’t able to find the yuzu juice that was called for in the top layer, but they said you could substitute lime juice. After I made the dessert, the verdict from my family was that it was good but a little too tart. We like our lemon desserts tart, but this made your mouth pucker! I thought that the sourness was coming from the lime jelly and wondered what it would be like as a citrus tart with an orange jelly instead of lime.
The next weekend I tried again but altered the jelly to include orange instead of lime. It was okay, but we preferred just lemon and lime as the flavour profile. I decided that it would be best to leave out the jelly layer altogether. That would take out a step in the process of making the tart, and the sourness would hopefully be more balanced.
Because I was taking out a layer, I had to calculate how to make a bit more filling. Since the crust uses only part of an egg, I made the calculation using the rest of that egg plus 3 more eggs in the filling. I hoped that would work out to the right amount of filling to fill the crust. It did!
I made one other small change to the recipe. The original recipe called for lemon zest in both the crust and the lemon filling, but that left me with a bunch of zested lemons that I had to think of uses for. For the third iteration of the tart, I used lime zest instead of lemon. This worked perfectly since I was using lime juice in the ganache cream but no zest, so it balanced the recipe well.
The third tart was definitely the winner! The texture of the tart is so silky and had the perfect balance of tartness. I like the fact that the filling uses whole eggs instead of just egg yolks as many lemon tarts do and I greatly prefer the whipped ganache cream as the topping to a meringue. It is much less sweet than meringue and I like the texture better. For those of you who aren’t fond of white chocolate, you can’t even taste it. It just helps to stabilize the whipped cream so that it holds its shape and doesn’t melt after a few hours.
Here is a shot of the tart after we took a few slices out followed by the recipe:
Ingredients
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For the Lime Tart Crust
- For the Lemon Cream
- For the Lime Whipped Cream
- To finish
Instructions
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For the Lime Tart Crust
- Beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add in egg and mix to combine.
- Add flour, almond flour, salt and lime zest. Beat together until the mixture forms a cohesive ball. (You can also mix by hand with a spatula)
- Place on some plastic wrap and flatten into a disk. Chill for at least 1 hour.
- On a floured counter, roll the dough to a roughly 11-inch/27 cm diameter. Place the dough in a 9-inch/23 tart pan with a removable bottom. Press the dough firmly to the bottom and sides of the pan and cut off the excess. Liberally prick the bottom of the tart shell with a fork to prevent it from puffing up during baking. Cover with plastic wrap and chill for 2 hours in the freezer.
- Preheat the oven to 320F/160C. Place the tart on a baking sheet, remove the plastic wrap and bake until golden, about 25-30 minutes. Allow to cool completely before removing from the pan and adding the filling. For the Lemon Cream
- In a small bowl, combine gelatine and water. Let sit for 5 minutes.
- In a medium saucepan, combine 3 eggs plus the leftover egg from the crust, the lemon juice, sugar, salt and lemon zest. Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly until the mixture thickens and just begins to bubble, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.
- Whisk in the gelatin until combined.
- Gradually whisk in the butter until melted and the mixture is homogenous. Pour in a bowl and cover with plastic wrap directly on the surface of the lemon cream. Chill for 3-4 hours until the mixture is set. For the Lime Whipped Cream
- In a small bowl, combine gelatin with water. Let sit for 5 minutes.
- Place chocolate in a medium microwave-safe bowl and cook in 20-second bursts, stirring between each burst, until the chocolate is melted.
- Place 1/4 (100 g) of the cream in a small saucepan. Bring to a simmer over medium heat. Pour the cream over the melted chocolate in 2-3 additions, stirring until combined.
- Add the gelatin to the chocolate and whisk to combine.
- Pour in the remaining cream (300g) and stir to combine. Pour in the lime juice and stir to combine. The mixture will start to look a bit thicker. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge until the mixture is set, about 3-4 hours. To Assemble the Tart
- Place tart shell on a serving plate. Spoon the lemon cream in the middle of the tart shell and smooth the top with an offset spatula.
- Whip the lime whipped cream to stiff peaks. Mound over the top of the lemon cream or pipe it decoratively. Top with lime zest. The tart may be served right away, but the filling will be more firm when given a few more hours to chill.
Margot!!!! There is drool all over my laptop!!! I need to put a complaint in to you!!!
Lol! I’m so sorry 😊
This looks like a keeper!
I think so 😀
this looks amazing!
Thanks!