Lemon Meringue Tarts

A bright and tangy baking project, perfect for the upcoming holiday weekend!

As an American who grew up on cookies, brownies, and cupcakes, French style pastries really appeal to me. Little tarts and canelés, macarons, éclairs and other little cuties bring me happiness. The fact that the same small set of ingredients can be used so expansively is, quite frankly, really freaking cool. Nothing is more pleasing to me than seeing a pastry case full of a colorful assortment—not just brown, brown, and brown. I try to incorporate color into my recipes as much as possible!

I love making tarts, especially ones where you prepare multiple components and assemble them together in the end. Without a wet filling holding it down (echem, pie), your tart crust can fully bake to its crisp, golden brown potential. You can cook your filling as far as you want, be it thicker or thinner depending on your textural preferences. You can choose to top it with meringue, whipped cream, ganache, or whatever else you can fantasize. I enjoy the endless customization and LEGO vibes of it all.

Fruit tarts are cute, I’ll definitely be making some this summer—but for spring, lemon meringue tarts are the it girl. I think they’re one of the easier fancy-looking desserts to make. One potential barrier is a blowtorch for the meringue topping, but there are ways around that, like broiling it briefly, if you don’t have one. To be honest, I get a little spooked every time I go to use my blowtorch. Contents under pressure are kinda scary!!

You could break this into a two day project, prepping the tart shells and lemon curd the day before, then making the meringue and finishing the day you want to serve them. I will say that I kept half of the batch in the fridge for 2 days, even after adding meringue and torching… and they actually held up quite nicely!

Some Recipe Notes

• This is the longest recipe I’ve ever shared on here, so bare with me and know that this is a project of a bake! If you bake these and find any of my timing or steps unclear, shoot me a message and I’ll help you out. :)

• Formatting feedback is welcome! I’ve been trying Substack’s new feature for embedding recipe cards, but it’s a little tough to divide into sections by recipe components like tart dough, curd, etc. Do we like this? Is it hard to read? Let me know!

• Fast dough method: you can make this dough easily in the food processor. Place the dry ingredients and butter in the processor and pulse until sandy. Add the egg, yolk, and vanilla and pulse just until a dough forms.

• When using a double boiler, I mention “whisk the entire time” in the recipe step. This is not a full speed, whisk-as-hard-as-you-can moment. Just keep the mixture moving to make sure it cooks evenly, slow and steady. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl with the whisk as you stir.

• This recipe makes 8 tarts, using 3 to 4-inch pans. If you only have a large tart pan, or a long rectangular one, or whatever else—you can use that, too! You could also try using a muffin pan to form your tarts if that’s all you’ve got. I would advise removing the baked shells from the muffin pan after cooling and setting them on a small sheet pan or plate so they’ll be easy to move later on.

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