Technical Bake 1: Tarte au Citron

My challenge began yesterday with my mini Tartes au citron a la Mary Berry's masterclass. I decided to do mini ones because if I had a whole one, well it would be eaten. Simple really!
I started with the pastry and rather than dividing by two I made the full quantity and then froze half of it (more tartes in the near future). The cleverest thing about this recipe is Mary Berry's tip for rolling out the pastry. I always have that problem of getting the rolled out pastry from the work surface to the tart tin without it breaking up and Mary has the solution. Roll the pastry out on the base of your tin! Place it on some greaseproof pastry and mark a circle about 4cm bigger than your base, flour the base and then place the ball of pastry on top. You then roll out as normal, moving the paper rather than the pastry. Once it is the correct size fold in the edges, lift the base and drop into the tin. You can then unfold the pastry and press into the fluted edges, no breaking or sticking, genius! The other tip was to use tinfoil to hold your baking beans for the blind bake, it makes it so much easier to support the beans and to take them out half way through. As a result of these I managed to get two almost perfect pastry cases, something I have never managed before. Thanks Mary.
The top tip for getting the filling into your case without spilling any is to fill the case once it is on your baking tray in the oven. As my tartes were smaller I knew I needed to alter the baking time, so I left them in for 20mins (rather than the 30-35 in the recipe). I checked them for the "wobble" but they were pretty much set so I was a bit worried that I had failed on the first hurdle. I took them out and let them cool for about 5 minutes before moving them from the tins to the serving plates.
All that was left was the tasting. I dusted them with icing sugar just before I served them and we dove in. The pastry was nice and thin and it wasn't soggy and the filling was smooth and lemony. I think that Mary would have been pleased with my first effort and now I know how to do it I will be making it a lot more often.

My Mission Should I Choose to Accept It...

Instead of being out enjoying our great summer (!) I have been enjoying the wonderful Great British Bake Off. I missed the first episode but from then on I was hooked, what great telly! I loved it. And the right person won, Jo was great. Just amazing what they achieved. With the announcment of the winner I thought that was it and was away for a couple of weeks and came back to another two episodes. God bless the series link on the sky machine. Masterclasses with Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood where they have made all the technical challenge bakes with lots of hints and tips. What a treat. And as I was watching the second one yesterday I had an idea, I would make all eight. It was just an idea and then I thought, why not? They are all yum and I will learn lots too. So that is my mission and I have accepted it. There isn't a timeframe on this (not practical really) but over the next few weeks I hope I can complete the task. I'm looking forward to all of them but I think the Battenburg may be the last one, my least favourite. I have chosen to start with the Tarte au Citron, not sure why, it just looked so good. I'm going to make two mini ones rather a big one so I have decided to halve the ingredients. So more later with results and pictures.