Mouth-puckering secret behind this easiest-ever lemon tart

Although I’ve made many kinds of lemon tarts through the years, it took this assignment to arrive at my favorite version.

I wanted to crack the code on using a whole lemon, similar to one I’ve made for more than a decade based on Dorie Greenspan’s recipe in “Paris Sweets.” Instead of making lemon curd, you add the whole fruit (minus the seeds) and puree it with other filling ingredients. The tiny bits of lemon rind suspended in a smooth emulsion and the subtle bitterness imparted by the pith give the filling dimension and keep it from getting cloying.

Still, I knew I could improve on near-perfection. First, I tackled the crust, a fairly traditional pâté sucrée, which has a buttery cookielike snap. I scaled back the sugar and found it still retained the desired crispness. A tablespoon of lemon zest gave the crust bright flavor, and a whole egg, rather than just a yolk, created a sturdier texture for easier rolling out. And as I contemplated the sticky dough that stuck to even a well-floured counter, I decided that rolling it out between two pieces of parchment made for a less frustrating experience.

In approaching the filling, though I loved the simplicity of pureeing the whole lemon with butter, sugar and eggs, I wanted a more unabashedly lemony flavor. I found it in the same lemon that gave up its zest to the crust. Adding that second lemon to the filling delivered precisely the bright pucker I longed for.

My laziness served up a timesaving simplification when I decided to see what would happen if I threw cubed, cold butter into the food processor (the original recipe calls for the butter to be melted). The mixture came out curdled, which worried me, but I poured it into the crust and baked the tart anyway. The resulting texture was identical to the one made with melted butter.

In my final test, as I grew bolder and lazier still, I cut the butter into four pieces and it pureed just the same.

You can certainly argue that the easiest lemon tart is the one you buy at a bakery, but I implore you to try this one. It may

look like a fancy French dessert, but it’s blissfully forgiving and demands little baking proficiency.

Scott Suchman / For the Washington Post This lemon tart is simpler to to make than it appears and is blissfully forgiving of lazy shortcuts.