Recipe for Tarte au Citron - Simply irresistible!
A true culinary masterpiece unfolds over 480 pages - "Vive La France" by Stéphane Reynaud, which delves deep into the culinary soul of France in 299 recipes. You could almost say it's like a road trip through France, only without the jet lag - but with all the more good butter! The selection of dishes is as varied as the regions themselves - a veritable feast of classics that are so well explained that even a cooking novice can conjure up the charm of France in their own kitchen with the help of this great culinary recipe book.
We discover the recipe for our favorite French sweet, the Tarte au Citron on page 416. Here it is described as lemon cake with meringue. Whether it is described with French elegance as "tarte au citron" or more crudely as "lemon cake", it doesn't change the end result, which is simply divine! A cake that feels like a wedding present for the palate. The meringue on top? Almost too pretty to eat (but don't worry, we did it anyway). Irresistibly delicious and so lemony that the cake itself almost shouts "C'est la vie!". If that's not pure French magic, we don't know what is. We say: it's a must for every kitchen - but beware, this cake could get anyone hooked!
Tarte au Citron - The ingredients:
(for one tart or fruit tart tin)
For the cake batter:
- 125g butter
- 70g fine sugar
- 50g ground almonds
- 250g flour
- 1 egg
Mix the softened butter with the sugar and almonds and gradually sift in the flour. Add the egg and mix all the ingredients into a homogeneous dough (if it gets too dry, simply add a little lemon juice or a dash of cognac - the book says that we should add a little water in this case - but in our opinion, lemon + cognac tastes much, much better! Do you think so too? Now form the dough into a dumpling and cover and chill until ready to use.
For the topping:
- 3 untreated (organic) lemons
- 100 g butter
- 200 g fine sugar
- 15 g cornstarch
- 3 eggs
- 3 egg whites
Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Roll out the pastry and line a tart or fruit cake tin with it. Blind bake in the oven at 180 degrees for 15 minutes. Remove the pastry and turn the oven down to 160 degrees.
Grate the zest of one lemon, squeeze out the juice of all three fruits. Melt the butter with 150 grams of sugar, add the juice and zest of the lemons and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat. Whisk the cornstarch with the eggs and mix with the butter and sugar mixture. Spread the lemon cream evenly over the baked pastry base and bake in a 160°C oven for 40 minutes. Remove the cake from the oven.
Whisk the egg whites with the remaining sugar until very firm. Set the oven to the grill function. Spread the beaten egg whites over the cake and gratinate under the hot oven grill for 1 minute.
