What: Lemon Curd and Lemon Curd Tart (p.199)
Where: The Art of Simple Food
Who: Alice Waters

What an easy, bright, delicious, cheerful recipe! This was simply delicious.

As Waters suggests in her Variations, I used 1 regular lemon and 3 Meyer lemons, with the zest of 2 Meyer lemons for a sweeter, more perfumed curd.

Of course you can stop there. But why?! Another of her Variations was to use the curd for a lemon tart. I followed her Sweet Tart Dough (Pâte Sucrée) recipe, replacing gluten flour with an equal amount of Pamela’s Bread Flour, and replacing the 1/3 cup of sugar with a shy 1/3 cup of Lakanto. (This dough, she says, makes wonderful little thumbprint cookies for filling lemon curd or jam!).  In place of the 2 Tablespoons of milk, I used almond milk. And for the 1/3 cup sugar in the curd, I used 2 Tablespoons Super Sweet Blend (but 1/3 cup of Lakanto would work equally well).  If you use regular sugar, the curd will have a smoother, glossier surface.

For the tart shell, these specific directions from Waters were helpful: refrigerating the dough for 15 minutes once it’s in the tart pan, and docking (pricking) the dough before baking. This allows for not needing to use pie weights (or beans or rice).