To find out, I made two tart shells, and while they baked, I cooked two batches of filling. How much of the sliceable nature of a lemon tart filling is owed to butter’s solidity? I worried that the olive oil substitution would fail in this recipe because butter is a solid at room temperature and oil is clearly a liquid. But an empty tart shell, even one that’s so easy to make and so satisfyingly crisp, is a forlorn thing. There was a mere hint of olive oil flavor in the crust, which seemed perfect.
BUZZFEED TASTY LEMON CURD TART PLUS
When I substituted ½ cup of olive oil plus 2 tablespoons of water for the butter, the dough was appropriately moist but not slick, and I had no trouble cutting the baked crust into pristine wedges.
An absence of water produces a too-fragile crust. It’s less fat overall, but that water is important because it interacts with the protein in the flour to form gluten, which provides the structure that holds the crust together. So 10 tablespoons of butter is actually 8 tablespoons of fat and 2 tablespoons of water. Unlike olive oil, butter isn’t a pure fat it’s almost 20 percent water. Ten tablespoons of oil made the dough shiny with grease, and the baked crust was so tender and crumbly that I couldn’t cut it into wedges without it disintegrating. Tweaking that recipe by substituting olive oil for the melted butter seemed like a no-brainer, but it didn’t work out quite the way I had envisioned it. There was no chilling or rolling required, and the crust baked up crunchy and rich. Then, instead of rolling it out, I crumbled it straight into the tart pan and pressed it to an even thickness.
I simply stirred 10 tablespoons of warm melted butter into the dry ingredients until the mixture resembled Play-Doh-no food processor necessary. Years ago I developed a tart dough in which I defied convention by using melted rather than cold butter. And maybe, as with the cake, olive oil would make the recipe even easier. Maybe this lemon tart recipe was my chance to help the fruit side of the pairing shine. Olive oil and lemons have such an undeniable affinity that it seems a shame not to make the most of it. And readers loved that olive oil cake, but they voiced one small objection: not enough lemon flavor. I added a near-homeopathic dose of lemon zest-just ¼ teaspoon-to boost the oil’s fruity, floral notes and left it at that. In fact, the olive oil flavor in the cake was so subtle that I had to take care not to obscure it. Using a liquid fat in that cake made the mixing process easy and quick: There was no softening of the fat and no creaming until light and fluffy, yet the crumb was beautifully plush and fine and the cake had an intriguing hint of olive oil flavor. But developing a recipe for an olive oil cake a couple of years ago reminded me that other fats offer advantages, too.
What could I possibly contribute? Well, actually, I had an idea: extra-virgin olive oil.Īdmittedly, it’s counterintuitive: Butter is featured in both the crust and the filling of almost every lemon tart. After all, bakers have been producing handsome, crisp-crusted tarts filled with smooth, bracing, just-sliceable curd for centuries without my assistance. When you’re a test cook, being asked to develop a recipe for a classic item such as lemon tart can be daunting.
0 kommentar(er)
