Not everyone thinks of citrus fruits as “winter fruits.” But that’s when oranges, grapefruits, tangerines, tangy lemons, and enticing limes are often at their peak. And that’s a good thing because there’s nothing that brightens up any season – but especially winter – better than a classic French lemon tart.
Any bakery in Paris will have a Tarte au citron on offer. Some are on the sweet side, others tart. I like my lemon tart, well…tart, for sure and when I search for lemons at my market, I choose the plumpest, juiciest ones I can find. Fortunately, good lemons are available just about anywhere, so anyone can make this tart. Most of us don’t even have to wait until winter!
I juiced my lemons, cracked some eggs, and got to work on the tart.
For the base, I used Paule’s pastry dough, which is so easy to make and hasn’t failed me yet. It’s delicious and buttery, and goes particularly well with the delicious lemon topping.
I cooked the filling, a sunny, luscious lemon curd, on the stovetop with the fragrant zest of the lemons, then poured the warm filling through a strainer to make it as smooth as possible.
One could pipe whipped cream on it or top it with meringue. To do so, let it cool and spread or pipe whipped cream over the top or serve a dollop alongside. If you want to give a go at meringue, check out my Lime Meringue Tart recipe or the marshmallow topping that I use on my Pumpkin Pie with Marshmallow Topping.
Both are delicious, but just as it is – or as the French say, nature – is just fine with me.
I recently updated this recipe to increase the amount of filling and I dialed down the sugar a bit due to frequent questions about reducing sugar in recipes. You can taste the filling in step 3 and if you'd like it sweeter, add up to 1/4 cup (50g) more sugar
If you find that you have a bit too much filling for your tart shell (they seem to vary), any remaining lemon filling that you don’t use can be spread on toast, fresh biscuits, or scones. You could substitute fresh lime juice for the lemon, and if you have Meyer lemons, reduce the sugar to 1/2 cup (100g). You can use a favorite tart dough recipe, or the one I’ve linked to.
Ingredients
1cup (250ml)freshly-squeezed lemon juice
grated zest of two lemonspreferably unsprayed
3/4 cup (150g)sugar
12tablespoons (170g)buttersalted or unsalted, cut into cubes
In a medium-sized non-reactive saucepan, heat the lemon juice, zest, sugar, butter, eggs and egg yolks. Have a mesh strainer nearby.
Stir until the butter is melted, then whisk the mixture continuously until the mixture thickens and holds its shape when you lift some of it up with the whisk and it visibly mounds up when dropped back down over the rest of the mixture in the saucepan. It should just take a few minute.
Pour the warm lemon curd though a strainer into a bowl (or directly into the tart shell), scraping with a rubber spatula to press it through.
Smooth the lemon filling in the prebaked tart shell and pop it in the oven until the curd is just set. It’ll take about 5 to 6 minutes.
Remove from the oven and let cool before slicing and serving.
Dinner in Paris generally starts at 8 pm, especially in restaurants, and I get ravenously hungry between lunch and dinner.
Parisians do dine rather late – often not until 9:30 pm or later, and that’s an awfully long stretch. So French people visit their local pâtisserie for an afternoon snack, known as le goûter, although nowadays Parisians often call it le snack.
Le snack is often nothing more than a buttery financier or a tender madeleine. At home, French children at home are often given a split piece of baguette with a bar of dark chocolate tucked inside to keep them happy until dinner.
But my snack of choice is invariably les chouquettes: Cream puffs covered with crunchy nuggets of sugar, then baked until golden-brown. The eggy, pillowy puffs are piled uneventfully behind the counter and sold in crisp little paper sacks, each one holding about 100 grams, or about 10. I found that engaging the counter person in a few words of niceties will often mean that before the ends of the bag are twisted shut, an extra puff will be tossed in as a little gift for l’américain.
Nothing is easier to make than chouquettes and you can bake them right with ingredients you likely already have on hand. The only thing you’ll need to find is pearl sugar, which gives the puffs their signature crunch. Some tell me you can buy it at Ikea stores, or you can find it at King Arthur or on Amazon. If you have sugar cubes, you can crush those up into rough chunks and use those, although they’re not quite the same. And if you’re like me, and like chocolate, you could press some chocolate chips into a few of the puffs before baking.
This is one of my favorite of all French snacks and I can polish away a whole bag, or tray, in no time. These are best made and eaten right away, or later the same day – if they last that long!
From The Sweet Life in ParisShaping the mounds of dough is easiest to do with a pastry bag, although you can use two spoons or a spring-loaded ice cream scoop.Pearl sugar is available in the U.S .from King Arthur and at G. Detou in Paris, and is also available from French companies such as Daddy (called perles de sucre) and Vahiné (sucre chouquettes). You can approximate pearl sugar by crushing sugar cubes in a sturdy zip-top freezer bag with a rolling pin or hammer.
Course Dessert
Cuisine French
Servings 6servings
Ingredients
1cup (250ml)water
1/2teaspoonsalt
2teaspoonssugar
6tablespoons (90g)unsalted buttercut into small chunks
1cup (140g)flour
4large eggsat room temperature
Glaze:1egg yolkmixed with 1 teaspoon milk
Pearl sugar
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees (220 C.) Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. (Depending on the size of your baking sheets, it may take two.)
Heat the water, salt, sugar, and butter in a small saucepan, stirring, until the butter is melted. Remove from heat and dump all the flour in at once. Put the pan back on the heat and stir rapidly until the mixture is smooth and pulls away from the sides of the pan.
Allow dough to cool for two minutes, then briskly beat in the eggs, one at a time, until smooth and shiny.
Using two spoons, scoop up a mound of dough with one spoon roughly the size of an unshelled walnut, and scrape it off with the other spoon onto the baking sheet. You can also use a pastry bag fitted with a plain 1/2-inch tip and pipe them.
Place the mounds evenly-spaced apart on the baking sheet(s). Brush the top of each mound with some of the egg glaze then press the pearl sugar over the top and sides of each mound. Use a lot. Once the puffs expand rise, you’ll appreciate the extra effort (and sugar.)
Bake the cream puffs until puffed and well-browned, about 25 to 30 minutes. If they get too dark midway through baking, lower the heat of the oven to 375ºF (190ºC) and continue baking. (If you want to make them crispier, you can poke a hole in the side with a knife after you take them out of the oven to let the steam escape.)
Notes
Storage: The cream puffs are best eaten the same day they’re made. Once cooled, they can be frozen in a zip-top freezer bag for up to one month. Defrost at room temperature, then warm briefly on a baking sheet in a moderate oven, until crisp.
It’s interesting how many views of Paris there are, which you notice if you follow the variety of voices that write about life in the City of Lights. (A mistake some writers make is to call it the City of Light, and ‘lights’ in actually plural.) I tend to find all the quirks and report on the sardonic side of things, which for some reason, always find their way into my life. But the main reason is that I live in Paris full time and don’t just get to sampe my way through the lovely pastry shops and meet chocolatiers, but like most Parisians, I also spend a fair amount of time wrestling with perplexing bureaucracy and other idioms of life in the City of Fight Light.
For example, last week I went to the largest fabric store in Paris where I always buy étamine (cotton gauze), which I couldn’t locate so I asked a salesperson to direct me there. He was having a nice chat with his co-workers but was kind enough to take a moment to tell me “Non”, they didn’t carry it…and went back to his conversation. After I raised an eyebrow and asked a few more times, just be sure, he and all the others in the group shook their heads, confirming with absolute certainty that they definitely did not have that in stock.
Because I was absolutely certain that they did, I went down one level and, of course, found a huge bolt of it right on top of the pile of other rolls of fabric. C’est comme ça…
Having a French partner helps, and he also helps me in the kitchen, like when Romain arrived with a bag of apples from a friend’s farm in Burgundy. Some were dinged up a bit, as they weren’t from the supermarché, but French apples are delicious for baking, where bumps and bruises magically disappear.
So to keep things in perspective (as best I can…) I like to read other voices from Paris, such as Dorie Greenspan, whose book, Around My French Table, is a hefty collection of her favorite recipes and stories about Paris. She lives on the opposite side of the city, in a different neighborhood. And where I am sometimes defeated by city life, as a “part-time Parisian,” as she often calls herself, she manages to see the good in everything.
This is a very typique French recipe for home cooks, made with not a lot of ingredients, relying on no special techniques or hard-to-find equipment, and loved by all. The cake is easily mixed up in a bowl, scraped into a cake pan, and in less than the time it takes to run to the pâtisserie for a store-bought cake—or a seemingly simple length of fabric—you can have an authentic French cake…right from your own oven.
When a journalist interviewed me for an article about her, she ended the interview with; “So David, what is it like to sit around Dorie’s French table?”
I sat there for a few moments scratching my head to remember, then not sure of what to say, I finally replied, “I’ve not sat around Dorie’s French table.” Which was true. When she comes to Paris, we generally go out exploring. The idea of sitting indoors while Paris awaits just isn’t as interesting to me as sharing pastries on a park bench or hitting an outdoor market with her.
If you want to sit at Dorie’s table, the line starts here. However while you wait, you can feast on her recipes, just as I’m doing.
Adapted from Around My French Table by Dorie GreenspanDorie doesn’t specify any type of apple but instead advises that you should use a mix of them. I don’t know what kind mine were since Romain brought them to me. The rum is really a great flavor in this cake, but if you’re avoiding alcohol, you could double or triple the vanilla to compensate. I also like this recipe because you can make it with ingredients easily on hand. Being American, I was tempted to add a dusting of ground cinnamon to the apples, but then it wouldn’t be authentically French. Hence I often decide to add a dollop of crème fraîche alongside, but it's wonderful just as it is.The original recipe uses a springform pan but if you don't have one, you can use an 8-inch (20cm) cake pan, buttering it well and lining the bottom with a circle of parchment paper before adding the batter. I've also make it in a 9-inch (23cm) cake pan and it works well, although it won't be a high.
Course Dessert
Cuisine French
Servings 8cake
Ingredients
3/4cup (110g)flour
3/4teaspoonbaking powder
pinchof salt
4(about 2 pounds, 1kg)large applesa mix of varieties
2large eggsat room temperature
3/4cup (150g)sugar
3tablespoonsdark rum
1/2teaspoonvanilla extract
8tablespoons (115g)buttersalted or unsalted, melted and cooled to room temperature
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350ºF (180ºC) and adjust the oven rack to the center of the oven.
Heavily butter an 8-inch (20cm) springform pan and place it on a baking sheet.
In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
Peel and core the apples, then dice them into 1-inch (3cm) pieces.
In a large bowl, beat the eggs until foamy then whisk in the sugar, then rum and vanilla. Whisk in half of the flour mixture, then gently stir in half of the melted butter
Stir in the remaining flour mixture, then the rest of the butter.
Fold in the apple cubes until they’re well-coated with the batter and scrape them into the prepared cake pan and smooth the top a little with a spatula.
Bake the cake for 50 minute to 1 hour, or until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean. It may take less time, depending on the apples, so check the cake 5 or so minutes before the recommended baking time. Let the cake cool for 5 minutes, then run a knife around the edge to loosen the cake from the pan and carefully remove the sides of the cake pan, making sure no apples are stuck to it.
Notes
Serving: Serve wedges of the cake just by itself, or with crème fraîche or vanilla ice cream.Storage: The cake will keep for up to three days covered. Since the top is very moist, it’s best to store it under a cake dome or overturned bowl.
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