I tried Smitten Kitchen’s tarte au citron last night. It was both a success and a failure. Pâte sucre? Awesome. I can’t believe that I made such a successful crust! I even altered the recipe (slightly) by using hazlenuts instead of almonds and only making a third of the recipe (it yields three 9-inch tart crusts, thus calls for a lot of butter, which I didn’t have). The filling, however, wasn’t as wonderful. It tasted good, just not great. We were all glad I had prepared some fresh whipped cream to help with some of the filling’s intensity. I don’t think I allowed the sugar and the lemon to blend for long enough, because there were more bits of zest and peel than I would have liked. I have also decided that my oven gets too hot. Andrew actually posited this theory when I showed him pictures of Smitten’s tart, so gorgeously yellow. Mine, though also yellow in color, didn’t sing with that fresh color of lemons. It more so hummed along, resembling the spotty golden color of a quiche. I love a beautiful quiche, mind you, just not when it’s actually a lemon tart.

When I started whining about how my past few baking attempts have been near or complete debacles, my friend Angela’s suggestion was to just start making a lot of Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies. Or lemon bars instead of lemon tart. I think it was a request, actually, because I explained earlier, as we waited around for the tart to cool, how I hardly ever eat what I bake. And if that’s true, Angela will suddenly have a lot more cookies and bars in her life.