Lemon Meringue Tart
When my partner and his parents left to hike a big, challenging mountain last fall, I stayed home, because I was scared of falling to my death. So instead I did a daring, 7-hour bake of a lemon meringue tart.
Note: 7 hours is generous. I was having a lovely leisurely Sunday baking and resting in between steps.
I did a lot of firsts with this bake. First time blind baking a crust. First time making a curd in a bain-marie. First time using a blow torch on food. Fire is fun, and the fear of the smoke detector is only what stopped me from toasting even more of that meringue.
The crust was fine. Nothing amazing but certainly didn’t detract from the star of the show, which was the lemon custard. That was perfectly tart and not too sweet. I do think some of the egg in the custard started to cook in the bain-marie, but the recipe called for straining the mixture as well as blending with an immersion blender. The torched meringue on top added the hint of sweetness that you want every other bite.
For the photography, I used two off camera lights, because I wanted as much room to play with settings to make the yellow of the lemon custard pop. I like photographing food in clean, uncluttered environments, so that’s what I started with, but I did play around with some extra settings after I cut a piece. At first, I staged it with a clean knife, but it looked so odd to have a clean knife next to the cut tart. Quick lesson learned there!
