I had been wanting to create a dessert with yuzu for a while, so I decided to start with a classic: lemon meringue pie, but with yuzu. I love how this turned out, it has such a distinctive flavour, which feels very familiar for the resemblance with lemon, but also mandarin-like.
For the pastry shell I made a vegan almond lemon sable: there was quite a lot of lemon zest in it, and with the pastry scrapes I made a couple of cookies that did not survive long – great with tea. Then I made a yuzu (vegan) creme pat for the filling, it was very silky and delicious. And finally I topped it with a vegan French meringue and some caramelised lemon peel.
These tartlets make a love tiny dessert, which feels quite light and refreshing.
It doesn’t take long to make them and the result is very satisfying and delicious. The elements are:
- Almond lemon sablee pastry shells
- Yuzu creme pat
- French meringue
- Caramelised lemon peel
Ingredients and Procedure (yields ~3 tartlets)
Almond Lemond sablee
80 g flour
50 g butter – it should be cold and cubed, I usually like the vegan block one for this kind of pastry because it’s harder and works better
30 g icing sugar
20 g almond flour
Pinch of salt
Zest 1 lemon
20g melted vegan white chocolate
1/2 tbsp almond milk
Incorporate the butter in the flours and icing sugar, then add salt Lemond and the melted chocolate. If the dough doesn’t come together or looks too crumbly add 1/2 tbsp almond milk. Let rest 1h in the fridge flattened into a disc and wrapped in cling fling.
Grease the tartlet rings and line them with the pastry. Freeze for 30 mins.
Preheat oven at 160C fan and when ready blind bake the tartlet shells for 15-20 minutes.
Remove them from the oven and let rest.
Yuzu creme pat
200g almond milk
Zest of 1/2 lemon
2 tbsp yuzy juice
Pinch turmeric
20g cornflour
50g sugar
Heat the almond milk with the lemon zest and the yuzu juice. Once warm pour on the cornflour sugar and turmeric mixture and whisk well to combine. Heat the mixture and keep whisking until it will start thickening. Remove from the heat and keep whisking for 1-2 minutes. Pour in a bowl and cover with cling film until ready to pour in the pastry shells. Pour and level with a butter knife.
Vegan French meringue
70g soy whey
20g egg replacer
70g caster sugar
7g liquid pectin
Mix the caster sugar and the pectin and set aside. Whisk the soy whey with the egg replacer (I used enerG) for 5-6 minutes, until you obtain soft peaks. Once you see soft peaks, start adding 1 tbsp at a time the sugar and pectin mix while beating. Keep beating for ~10 minutes, until you will have a stiff meringue – you should feel some resistance when beating.
Pipe as you prefer the meringue on the filled tartlets and blow torch the meringue.
Caramelised lemon peel
2 tbsp caster sugar
peel of 1 lemon cut in thin strips
Cook the sugar until it starts bubbling, throw the peel in until caramelised and then remove. Use as a decoration for your tartlets.
I hope you will try this recipe and will enjoy it, let me know here or on instagram @cake_files_ ! 🙂 Have a lovely week 🙂
Miri's Cake Files 