Lemon tartelettes with meringue (and passion fruit coulis)

The sour taste of lemon, the sweet taste of the meringue and the crunchy dough make for one of the most ingenious flavor combinations. Sink your teeth into this brittle pie filled with a filling of fresh lemon curd and a slightly sweet Italian meringue on top. Delicious as a pastry or dessert with a passion fruit coulis. This dish is written for dessert, with the passion fruit coulis as an extra.

Ingredients (6 persons)

Tartelette:

120 gr. flour
70 gr. granulated sugar
30 gr. almond flour
zest of 1 lemon
75 gr. cold butter
1 egg (medium / small)

Lemon curd

juice of 3 lemons (preferably organic)
zest of 2 lemons
120 gr. granulated sugar
3 eggs (medium)
175 gr. butter (at room temperature)

Italian meringue

60 ml. water
230 gr. sugar
protein from 3 eggs (medium)
little salt

Other

Passion fruit coulis
Granola
Stem ginger

Prepare

Prepare tartelettes

Place the sifted flour, almond flour, granulated sugar and zest in a large bowl and mix. Cut the cold butter into cubes and add it.

Knead the whole with your hands until the butter has been absorbed.

Beat the egg and mix it with the kneaded dough. Knead the dough with your hands until it becomes a ball. If the dough is too wet because the egg was too big, add some flour.

Wrap the dough ball in plastic foil and put it in the refrigerator for at least 1 hour. The dough should get cold.

At least one hour later …….

Heat the oven to 180°C.

Grease the tartlet molds with butter and sprinkle with flour.

Remove the dough from the refrigerator and knead it briefly by hand. Then roll out the dough on a lightly floured work surface to a thickness of about 3 millimeters. The best result is achieved with a floured rolling pin.

Divide the dough over the tartelette molds and cut the top off with a knife, so that the mold is nicely covered.

Place baking paper over the dough and fill the mold with baking pearls so that the dough does not rise during baking. Bake the tartelettes for 15 minutes (blind) in the oven with the baking pearls. Then remove the baking pearls and bake the tartelettes for another 5 minutes so that the inside is slightly colored.

Remove the dough from the molds and let it cool down.

Prepare lemon curd

Stir the eggs with a fork. In a saucepan, combine sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest and eggs and bring to the boil over low heat until it thickens. Stir regularly, the egg should not solidify.

Dice the butter in a large bowl. Pour the warm mixture of the lemon and the eggs over the butter and beat with a whisk for at least 2 minutes. A light cream will form.

Let the mixture cool slightly; does not have to be too long and then pour it into the cooled tart shells and put it in the fridge for at least 30 minutes to set and cool.

Prepare Italian meringue

Put 200 grams of sugar and the water in a saucepan and bring to the boil. You need a thermometer.

Beat the egg whites with a little sugar in a fat-free bowl. Little by little, add the rest of the sugar while beating. The egg white should become stiff.

When the boiling sugar water is at 118°C, remove it from the heat and slowly add it to the whisked egg white while whisking. Keep mixing, this is extremely important.

When all the sugar syrup has been poured into the egg whites, set the mixer to the highest setting and beat until the egg white is lukewarm.

When the whisk is removed from the beaten egg white, the egg white has a pearl color.

Decorating tartelette

Remove the filled tartlet tray from the refrigerator when the egg white has cooled down a little more. Place the meringue in a piping bag and decorate the tartlet with the meringe.

Put the prepared tartelettes away cold until serving.

Serve

If this dish is going to serve as dessert, follow the steps below. If this dish serves as a pastry, the steps below are not necessary, except for roasting the meringue.