LEMON TART
LEMON tart was made famous by the Roux brothers in the 1980s and has now achieved ubiquity. A pastry case filled with a citrusinfused, baked custard, it is a GBBO favourite – not just because of the danger of the tart having a soggy bottom, aka an undercooked base: sacrilege in Mary’s beady blue eyes. Both recipes require homemade pastry. Eek.
MARY RECIPE
She may be queen of our hearts, but Mary is not the queen of my tarts. After following her recipe to the sugar-coated letter, my lemon tart was soggy-bottomed, burnt around the edges and lacked citrus sharpness to cut through the sugar. She opts for a sweet shortcrust pastry in a large tin – whose size I blame for the wet undercarriage. EASE 3/5 TASTE 2/5
PRUE RECIPE
Most sane home cooks would avoid this recipe like the plague, as it has three different stages on three different pages and uses a pastry I’ve never heard of – a pâté sucrée. This is made by piling the ingredients (flour, eggs, sugar, butter) on the worktop and mixing with your hands. It is only when I get to the end of the recipe that I see a footnote suggesting that this could be done in a food processor. It has a high fat content, which makes it crispy but also hard to work, and I can’t get it thin enough to cover my tart tin without cracking, so downsize to small tins. In GBBO this would be automatic failure. Despite a too-thick crust, the tart is good. EASE 1/5 TASTE 4/5
WINNER
Prue, on taste, not effort.