Three Day Chocolate Lime Meringue Tart!

Please don't let the three day title of this blog put you off trying to make it, in less busy houses it could easily be made much quicker!! Once I have the school run over in the morning baby Halle is ready to go back to bed for her nap which gives me time to spend some time in the kitchen with Isaac for company!  Its great to have those few hours to get house sorted and start prepping for dinner before the rush of school run, homework and work kicks in! Baking time is limited so with something like this tart its great to be able to make it in stages.  This tart is three simple steps but it looks fabulous and tastes delicious. 

Firstly make the lime curd as made here, http://paulassweettreats.blogspot.com/2011/06/lovely-lime-curd.html. 

Secondly a chocolate shortcrust pastry tart shell is required.  I love Jamie Olivers sweet shortcrust recipe so I slightly adapted that to make a chocolate version.

Ingredients  (enough for 2 shells so freeze half)

• 250gr butter
• 200gr icing sugar
• a pinch of salt
• 450gr plain flour
• 50gr cocoa powder
• 4 egg yolks
• a little milk

Cream together the butter, salt and icing sugar then rub in the flour, cocoa, egg yolks until mixture looks like breadcrumbs.  Add the milk to form a dough, try not to handle it too much as this can make it tough.  Roll it up in clingfilm in a sausage shape and place it in fridge.  After an hour, cut slivers of it to line a tart tin, pushing the slivers together to cover tin.  At this stage it is ready to be baked blind at 180 degrees for 15 minutes or alternatively cover tart tin in clingfilm and place in freezer to be used at a later date.

So I put my shell in the freezer covered in clingfilm until required which was this evening!  My husband who normally is a plain eating man has discovered a love of Mexican food and I thought this would be the perfect cooling dessert to finish off the meal.  I took shell out of freezer and placed baking beans in it to prevent it from shrinking.  Still amazes me that you can put cling film in an oven, I know I am sad and obviously I need to get out more!  Put it in an 180 degree oven for 20 minutes until cooked through.  Leave in tin on wire rack to cool. 

Once cooled spoon the lime curd over the pastry.  If I had not eaten so much of it yesterday the layer of curd would have been much thicker than it was but oh well! (I enjoyed every morsel of it!)

I had frozen the egg whites that were over from the pastry recipe and had defrosted them overnight in the fridge.  My rule of thumb when making meringues is a tablespoon of caster sugar per egg white and some cream of tartar to boost the volume! Whisk egg whites till stiff then gradually add in the sugar and tartar.  Spoon meringue on top of the curd and place in oven for approximately ten minutes until peaks are browned.

As you can see there is not much of it left which tells its own story!  It is DELICIOUS!  The pastry was crumbly and the sharpness of the lime curd is perfectly matched with the sweet meringue! It was well worth the three days it took me to make it! :-)

Thanks to all who are reading my posts, am amazed at the amount of people that are taking time to read it! I seem to have a lot of American readers so hi to you all.  I think a mississippi mud pie is next to be made with my extra chocolate tart shell that I have in the freezer so if you have any tips let me know!