Gluten Free Lemon Tart

It is hard to believe, but I never baked lemon tart in my life, and even more, never had one. Not in my pre-coeliac times, not after diagnosis many years ago. But I had to make this amazing sweet treat, if I wanted to cover most popular and loved pastries in their gluten free versions. With my new love – buckwheat – it was time to see if the marriage of sweet buckwheat crust and lemon filling was made in heaven. Apparently, it was.

Several of my readers asked the question about the use of homemade buckwheat flour, made from raw kernels. To answer them, I made shortcrust pastry from homemade coarse buckwheat flour. This pastry had more interesting texture with occasional grainy pieces in the crust. I baked biscuits, lemon tart and frangipane tartlets from this dough. I have found this version of the recipe to be even better, compared to commercial flour with more fine texture.

For lemon filling recipe I used Donna Hay proportion of ingredients, just replacing pouring cream with sour cream. Sour cream, in my opinion, gives more depth to the flavour and I prefer to use it, or crème fraiche, wherever I can.

Ingredients:

pastry

enough for 2 22-23cm round tarts

• 280g raw buckwheat kernels (can be replaced by regular buckwheat flour)
• 125g unsalted butter
• 80g sugar (reduced by 20g from my original recipe)
• 10g vanilla sugar
• 15g coconut sugar
• 1 egg
• tapioca flour for rolling

lemon filling for 1 tart

• 2 eggs
• 3 egg yolks
• 110g sugar
• 125ml lemon juice
• 25og sour cream (I used Coles 36% fat sour cream)
• icing sugar for dusting

Preparation:

• grind raw buckwheat kernels to obtain slightly coarse flour (I used coffee grinder and ground buckwheat kernels in small portions)

• prepare shortcrust pastry (see here)
• use half of the pastry for tart base, second half can be refrigerated or frozen for later use
• shape the dough into a flat round disk
• dip both sides of the dough in tapioca flour
• roll the pastry to the size of removable bottom of the tart baking pan, adding 2 heights of the baking pan sides
• place rolled dough to a removable bottom, fold edges of the dough to the centre
• insert the bottom inside sides circle of the baking tray
• unfold the dough and gently press it down around perimeter
• turn excess dough inside to form side crust with double thickness
• press the dough to the sides firmly
• remove excess dough using flat knife to make the crust neat, as shown below for buckwheat crust made from regular flour

• line the crust with baking paper, use ceramic weights, or any other weights for blind baking
• bake in preheated to 170C oven for 13-15min
• brush the bottom of the crust with egg white (optional)
• remove weights and bake for another 13-15min
• reduce temperature to 150C

• prepare lemon filling
• mix eggs, egg yolks with sugar, until sugar is dissolved, try not to whisk
• add sour cream and mix it in
• add lemon juice and mix until all ingredients are combined
• strain lemon filling through the sieve
• pour 2/3 of the filling into the crust

• transfer baking tray with tart baking pan to the oven
• add remaining lemon filling

• bake for 35-40min until lemon filling is just set
• let lemon tart cool inside baking pan
• do not remove the ring from the pan until pastry cooled down

• do not remove the bottom of the pan until the whole tart is completely cool

I do not think that lemon tart needed anything extra to serve it, but a dollop of clotted cream would make this slice even more indulgent.

The crust was hard and crunchy, and the filling had an intense lemon taste with soft and silky texture. Both taste and texture stayed the same the next day. Icing sugar on the top of the tart provided a nice contrast of sweet surface and tart filling. Buckwheat crust added extra crunch to the overall texture of the tart.

I used the rest of the dough to bake plain biscuits, without any toppings. Coarse buckwheat flour added to the texture of these biscuits. Baked pastry stays dry and crunchy indefinitely. The longest time I kept it in an air-tight container, was 5 weeks. Biscuits were the same as the day I baked them.