WHAT YOU NEED

Sweet Pastry Dough

1. In a food processor or free standing mixer with paddle attachment, place flour, vanilla, zest and butter. Blend till 90 per cent even mixture, it shall resemble the look of fine crumble texture. If working with free standing mixer use on low to medium speed, as high speed will have flour all over the table!
2. Add icing sugar, salt. Blend until even and no lumps.
3. Add eggs and mix till even paste. DON’T OVERMIX, as this can lead to a tough pastry.
4. Wrap sweet paste in plastic wrap shaped into flat discs as this will make rolling the dough later easier and helps sweet paste to chill quickly.
5 Chill in fridge for 1 hour minimum. This allows the dough to firm up (chill the butter once more) and relax the dough (as it has been worked a lot during the process so far).
6. Roll out the dough to 2-3mm thickness on a lightly floured flat surface or between 2 sheets of greaseproof/silicon paper. If the dough gets too soft to handle while working, place on a flat tray and chill 5-10 minutes so you can continue handling with greater ease.
7. If you are using large tart shells, roll 3mm; if using small ones, roll 2mm. Cut out as much dough to fit tart shells and fit, pushing in paste evenly, touching up with extra dough if necessary. Chill fitted tart shell for minimum 20 mins in the fridge (this helps against pastry shrinkage while baking).
8. Preheat oven to 150°C, blind bake* until golden brown. Cool in tart shells with blind baking weights.
9. Once cooled, remove weights and tin, and store in an air tight container to keep crunchy and fresh.

Lemon Curd

1. Boil juice, zest and butter in a pot.
2. Whisk yolks with sugar in a bowl till evenly combined.
3. Pour 1/3 of hot liquid onto eggs and sugar mixture, whisk well till even. Scrap all of this into the pot.
4. Cook over medium heat, while whisking evenly and scraping corners of pot continuously till 82°C. (I use a digital thermometer.) Be carful as you do not want the curd to catch and burn or turn into ‘sweet lemony scrabbled eggs!’
5. Pour into a bowl, which is over a bath of water with ice. Once cooled it can be transferred to a jar or container for storage in the fridge. I like to use it when it has had time to chill overnight and is extra firm.

Italian Meringue

NOTE: ALL TOOLS USED TO MAKE THIS NEED TO BE SUPER CLEAN AND DRY.
1. Bring to boil water with sugar in a pot over medium heat. Cook till 116°C to 120°C max. (I use a sugar thermometer for this job.)
2. In the meantime, while sugar is cooking, slowly start to whisk egg whites on medium speed with a pinch of salt in a free standing mixer. Once sugar has reached temperature take off heat and start to pour gently and slowly down side of bowl while egg whites are still whipping on medium to high speed at this point.
3. Once all the sugar has been poured in, continue to whip on medium speed till cool, then it is ready
to use.