Cherry Lemon Custard Tart
Why I Love This Recipe
This is a wonderful summer dessert. Feel free to use whatever fruit, fresh or frozen, that you enjoy. You can drain the cherries if you’d like, and it will make the custard a nice clean yellow specked with the cherries, but I prefer the more rustic cherry stained custard.
Ingredients You'll Need
Shortbread Crust:
14 tbsp unsalted butter (1 ¾ sticks), cold
½ cup granulated sugar
1 ½ cups all purpose flour
Custard:
3 large eggs
¾ cup granulated sugar
Juice and zest from 1 large lemon (about
1/3 cup juice and 2 packed tbsp zest)
¼ cup all purpose flour
3 cups (a 1 lb bag) frozen dark sweet
cherries, thawed
Directions
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
In a mixing bowl combine the butter, sugar, and flour for the crust, mixing it together with the tips of your fingers until it looks mostly like coarse crumbs with some pea sized chunks of butter left.
Dump the mixture into a 9 inch cake pan or spring form pan and press it down evenly into the bottom.
Bake at 400 degrees until it just turns golden brown, about 20 minutes.
While it is baking, beat together the eggs and sugar for the custard until they are very light yellow in color and thick in texture.
Whisk in the lemon juice and zest and the flour.
When the crust is done, pull it out and reduce the oven heat to 325 degrees.
Pour the cherries evenly over the crust, forming a single layer.
Pour the custard over the cherries, filling the pan.
Bake at 325 degrees for 1 hour, or until the custard is set and a toothpick comes out mostly clean, or an instant read thermometer reads 120 degrees.
Allow to cool completely before slicing.
Variation: Replace the lemon juice and zest with 2 tsp of vanilla extract.