Marco Pierre White's Lemon Tart Recipe

Method

To make the flan case

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180ºC. Sieve the flour and icing sugar and work in the butter.
2. Make a well in the flour mixture and add the lemon zest and vanilla grains.
3. Beat the eggs and add to the well. Knead the mixture with the fingers, then wrap in clingfilm and leave to rest for 30 minutes in the refrigerator.
4. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface to a size just large enough to fill the flan tin or ring to be used.
5. Using either a greased flan ring on a greased baking sheet, or a greased flan tin with a removable base, fold the dough into it. Gently ease the dough into the corners of the tin, ensuring a good 1cm overhang. Do not cut this off.
6. Line the flan with greaseproof paper and fill with enough dry baking beans or lentils to ensure that the sides as well as the base are weighted. This helps give a good finished flan shape.
7. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes.
8. After 10 minutes, remove the beans and greaseproof paper and trim the overhang from the flan. Return the flan to the ovenfor a further 10 minutes.

To make the lemon filling

1. Whisk the eggs with the sugar and the lemon zest.
2. Stir in the lemon juice and then fold in the cream. Remove any froth from the topof the mixture.

To make the flan

1. Reduce the oven temperature to 120ºC.
2. Pour the cold filling into the hot pastry (this ensures that the pastry case will be sealed and hold the filling) and bake for 30 minutes in the oven.

To serve

1. Pre-heat a very hot grill.
2. Sieve the icing sugar over the tart as soon as it comes out of the oven and then flash it briefly under the grill to caramelize the sugar.
3. Cut into 8 slices.