Lovely Luscious Lime Tart

Who doesn't love a citrus tart? Lemon. Lime. Lemon and Lime. They're all delicious. Sadly, I have to admit that the first lemon tart that I had was earlier this year. I bought it at the Davis Co-Op, which is a pretty interesting place to check out if you're in Davis. The tangy-ness of the tart surprised me at my first bite, but then I just couldn't stop. The curd was creamy, light, lemony, and the crust just complimented the tartness of the curd so well. I then bought a jar of lemon curd weeks after when I was making my lemon macarons. And then when I took my birthday trip to SF, I stopped by Miette's and got a lemon tart. Haha, I couldn't stop!! I even bought another one before I came home down south. So yes, I was hooked!


I started craving a citrus-y tart a while before I finally decided to make my Lime Tarts. But why did I choose lime over lemon (even though I never had a lime one before)? My parents have a lime tree, so I didn't have to go out and buy anything, we have A LOT of limes around the house! I also noticed that limes are definitely easier to squeeze the juice out of than lemons. So I had everything that I needed to make these really yummy yummy tarts! Of course I found about a dozen different recipes for lime curds and pastry doughs. But I settled on the lemon tart recipe by David Lebovitz and sweet tart crust from Smitten Kitchen that she adapted from Dorie Greenspan.

So I started by making the tart crust. The recipe is for a 9 inch tart but I have an11 inch tart pan and a bunch of smaller ones, about 4 inches. So I ended up with 5 small tarts and 3 baby ones, which you can see at the very bottom. I also don't have a large enough food processor to make the dough in, so I used a pastry cutter. And instead of chilling the dough and rolling it out, I pressed it into the tins. The tarts came out beautifully without shrinking! So just make sure your butter is cold and that you freeze the dough in the tin before you bake it. I kind of felt that my crust could have been more crumbly, I might have pushed in the dough too hard or something, but next time, I'm going to try replacing some of the flour with some ground almonds.

I'm not sure if my lime curd was too sour, I guess it depends on personal preferences, but I think it was a little too sour. I probably should have increased the amount of sugar in the recipe since the recipe was for lemons instead of limes. And I guess limes are more sour? Don't get me wrong though, they were still tasty! This was also my first time making a citrus curd, so I was really cautious about doing things right. The recipe is simple enough, my patience was just wearing thin since temperatures around here have been dancing around the 100's. I still can't believe I've been baking these past weeks since it's so hot! Long story short, I raised the heat a little over low, and probably cooked it too fast - so I kind of ended up with pieces of cooked egg. But I just strained them all out anyways, so my experience wasn't too bad...Thankfully :)