Cheat's Lemon Tart Recipe

I've gotten quite lazy with my baking.  But I still really love cake.  Dilemma.  I'm constantly on the lookout for tasty cake recipes which avoid all that tedious creaming of the butter and sugar, and the fewer ingredients the better. 

I'm a big lemon tart fan.  However, I can think of almost nothing worse than battling with short crust pastry.   It seriously takes all day.  So I call this the cheat's lemon tart recipe.  This is a gem of a recipe - I think it was originally from Better Homes and Gardens or something like that (disguised as the much less appetising 'lemon tea cake').  You get a lovely crumbly crusty type cake base, yummy lemon curd filling and crumble topping.  So not quite a tart but still, lemon curd.  The filling uses pretty much the same ingredients as the base, but with added lemon. 

I always always get tons of compliments when I make this.  The only downside is it requires a bit of heavy machinery - you need to pull out your food processor - but you can do all your tidying up while you leave the crumb mixture in the fridge!

Cheat's Lemon Tart Recipe

Ingredients

• 375g self-raising flour
• 250g sugar
• 175g butter
• 2 eggs plus 2 egg yolks
• 4 lemons, zest and juice 

Method

1. Bung 350g of the flour, 150g of the sugar and 100g of the butter in a food processor, and process until it's combined.
2. Add 1 egg and 1 egg yolk and again process until combined.  I have no idea what would happen if you just added that whole extra second egg.  I'm going to try this next time, because I never get around to making those merangues which I intend to do with spare egg whites...
3. Your mixture will be very dry and crumbly.  Spread out some cling wrap, and pour the mixture onto it.  Then grap the four corners of the plastic and try to smoosh it together (I find I need to wrap it a second time with cling wrap to keep it together).  Then chuck it in the fridge.
4. While this is in the fridge, preheat the oven to 180 C and grease and line a 20-ish cm round cake tin.  Mine is springform because that's how I roll.
5. Then make your lemon curd by placing the lemon juice and rind, the remaining sugar (100g) and butter (75g) into a saucepan.  Once the butter is melted add the other egg and yolk (see my comments re wasted eggs above) and whisk over heat until combined, then add the remaining flour (25g) and whisk until thickened.  This should happen pretty quickly. 
6. Get your crumb mixture out and dump two thirds of it into your prepared pan, and smoosh it down, keeping a slighly raised egdge.  Pour in the lemon curd, then sprinkle over the rest of the crumbs.
7. Bake for 30-35 mins, or until golden on the top and serve!!

nom nom nom

And it's good for a couple of days after you make it, but mine never lasts that long.
(I think I get extra points for this post because I avoided the title 'when life gives you lemons'!)