ugly delicious lemon tart

I almost didn’t upload these photos because the tart is so ugly. I worked really hard on it and it took me days. On Monday, I made the lemon curd, which involves - basically - whisking the damned mixture nonstop for almost forty minutes (because I’m still getting used to the electric stove after cooking on a gas stove for the past fifteen years). Then the lemon curd goes in the fridge to firm up and I made the tart base, which was much easier but of course involved the food processor which, dishwasher or not, is still a pain to clean. The tart dough needs to chill and rest before being blind baked for almost 40 minutes and then cooling completely. Then you patch the inevitable cracks and split with reserved dough before spreading it with raspberry jam. This is then baked, to create an impermeable layer that prevents the tart shell from getting soggy from the lemon curd; the vibrant jam also is supposed to make a clean line between the pale curd and golden tart. Then you whisk the curd with Greek yogurt and pour it into the tart before baking it.

Well, you can see what happened here; the curd filling ballooned up and over the edge of the shell before falling back as it cooled. The beautiful tart shell shrunk from the edges and ultimately cracked; thankfully, no filling leaked out. And the jam layer never solidified, so it just oozed out of the way as I poured in the curd filling, so there was no lovely line of jam. I was so disappointed with this bake; maybe I rushed baking the raspberry jam and I should have let it go longer?

The good news is that, ugly as this tart appears, it was delicious. Andy didn’t like it, which was no surprise since he really only likes citrus to eat as a fruit or drink as a juice. I’m not sure I’ll attempt this recipe again, the first disappointment from Claire Saffitz’ Dessert Person, as it was a pain to make (and what do you do with six egg whites?!) and Andy didn’t love it. All well - you win some, you lose some (and this wasn’t a total loss anyway).