Key Lime Tarts

While reminiscing of my summer, I suddenly felt a great urge of making something that took me back to the flavors of warm, sunny weather. I remember eating a mini key lime tart in Orlando, and so I went ahead and tried to recreate it. I used my four little tart pans and found an easy recipe on AllRecips.com. Key lime tarts or pies are always made out of key limes, egg yolks and sweetened condensed milk, and I just discovered that the key lime pie is the Florida state pie… how cool is that?! (since key limes are from the Florida keys, see… you learn something new everyday!) Anyways, now about the flavor; pretty good, although it tasted almost exactly like Pierre Hermé’s lemon tarts, and those were a bit better. Looking back, I should have added a meringue topping so that something would have tasted different. Rating: 3 out of 5.

Key Lime Tarts recipe: adapted from Allrecipes.com

Ingredients:
- 1 (14 ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
- ½ cup key lime juice
- 1 teaspoon grated lime zest
- 2 egg yolks
- 1 egg
- 1 tart crust recipe (see recipe below)

Instructions:
- In a medium bowl, blend together condensed milk, lime juice and zest. Mix in egg yolks and whole egg. Pour mixture into pie or tart crust, then cover and refrigerate for 1 hour.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).
- Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes. Chill before serving.

Tart Dough recipe: Martha Stewart - Baking Handbook

Ingredients:
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
- ½ cup confectioners’ sugar
- 2 large egg yolks
- 1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 2 teaspoons heavy cream

Instructions:
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine butter and confectioners’ sugar. Mix on low speed until combined, about 2 minutes.
- Add egg yolks, and mix until incorporated, about 1 minute, scraping down the sides of the bowl as necessary. Add ¾ cup flour, and mix on low speed just until the flour is incorporated, about 30 seconds. Add remaining ¾ cup flour along with the salt and cream, and mix just until flour is no longer visible, about 1 minute.
- Turn out dough onto a piece of plastic wrap, and shape into a flattened disk. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours of overnight. The dough can be frozen up to 1 month; thaw overnight in the refrigerator before using.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to an ½ inch thickness. With a sharp paring knife, cut out rounds of dough using a tartlet pan as a guide, leaving a ½ inch border around the edge. Fit the dough into tartlet pans, and lightly prick the bottom of the dough in each pan all over with a fork. Refrigerate tartlet shells until chilled, about 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. When tartlets are chilled, bake for 8 to 10 minutes. Pour lime mixture in tartlets, and refrigerate for 1 hour. Then, bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes.


The mini key lime tart I had last summer in Orlando, Florida. Wickedly yummy!

Unbaked key lime tart.

Baked! It is so strange that they taste exactly like Pierre Hermé’s lemon tarts, and yet they are made in completely different ways!

Next time I'm going to add some green food coloring, I think that looks extra yummy.