Ingredients:
| Crust | ||
| 6 oz | Cold butter | |
| 1 3/4 cups | Flour | |
| 3/4 cups | Sugar (fine) | |
| 3/4 tsp. | Salt | |
| Filling | ||
| 4 lrg. | Eggs, lightly beaten | |
| 1 1/3 cups | Sugar | |
| 3 tbsp. | Flour | |
| 1/4 tsp. | Salt | |
| 3/4 cup | Fresh lemon juice | |
| 1/4 cup | Milk | |
| Icing sugar, for dusting | ||
Method:
I made the crust just like all my other crusts, by hand! First I cut up the butter into little pieces and then added it to the flour and the salt.
I left the sugar until the end because I wasn't looking forward to rubbing sugar between my fingers. I guess in retrospect my fingers would have been well exfoliated!
Once I had my breadcrumbs I added the sugar and mixed it well.
For this recipe it is important that you have the correct sized dish because the filling is liquidy before it is baked and you will have a big mess if you pour it into a shallow dish. I used a 9 by 13 inch cake tray which I lined with parchment paper.
Then, with my hands, I pressed the mixture into my baking tray and then ... popped the crust into the FREEZER for 15 minutes. It might be prudent to check if you have space in the freezer before you start. If you're experiencing winter, then just throw it out on the balcony or the windowsill.
Time for the oven to go on and the filling to be made. I set my oven to 160 C because I use a fan oven, with a regular oven I believe it is 180 C or 350 F.
The filling is also relatively easy. The worst part is squeezing the lemon! I needed 3 1/2 large lemons to get 3/4 cup. I'm assuming that you could use lime juice too, (I always substituted lime juice for lemon when I'm cooking in Sri Lanka) although I think you'd need quite a few limes. Since limes tend to be more citric than lemons you might also want to consider using less than 3/4 cups. And I just had a brain wave, why not use any citrus fruit. I'm sure it would work with orange, grapefruit, etc.
Then I hand whisked the eggs, sugar, flour and salt together.
Stirred in the lemon juice and milk and voila! The filling was done. Really simple. In fact a great recipe for those little chef's in your house. Up until now there were no sharp utensils and no heat involved. I think I'm going to add this to my daughters recipe book.
The pastry was now ready and so was the oven so I popped it in and baked it for around 18 - 20 minutes. As you can see it was getting a bit brown in places when I took it out. Once you get this thing out of the oven you need to reduce the heat by about 10 C (25 F) so that the oven is ready to cook the lemon filling.
Onto this hot pastry, I poured my lemon filling and then carefully put it back in the oven for around 18 minutes. At around 18 minutes the filling was set and so I took the thing out and let it cool for a bit. Then, very carefully I tried to take the whole slab out of the pan. I was really freaking out at this point because I was sure it was going to break. But it didn't! I think that if I hadn't pressed in the dough so well at the beginning that it may well have cracked.
I left it on a wire rack to cool and then once it was cool cut it into rectangles. I don't remember how many I got out of it. You can cut them smaller if you are serving them together with a lot of other things and larger if they are being served by themselves. Use a really sharp knife to cut them because the bottom is crispy. Finally I dusted the squares with icing sugar. I did this by putting the icing sugar in a sieve and then shaking it over the squares. It didn't last long though. The squares are rather damp and absorb the sugar almost immediately so it wasn't pretty for long. If you are serving them for a special occasion (or photographing them!) I would recommend sprinkling them just before you serve them.
