Passionfruit Lemon Tart – Easiest & Tangiest Recipe
Passionfruit. Lemon. Tart. Ooo yeah..
Get ready for a tangy & lemony dessert that is bursting with flavor. This Passionfruit Lemon Tart is your easiest and most delectable tart recipe.
With the tanginess of passionfruit and the zing of lemons, you’ll have a tart that’s sweet but not too sweet, and oh so tangy and zingy. The crust and the passionfruit seeds create the perfect contrasting balance in texture to the thick creaminess of the tart itself.
This is your easy, simple go-to Passionfruit Lemon Tart recipe. No sieves, no simmering, no straining, no separating. Just knead, toss, mix, and bake.
No sieves, no simmering, no straining, no separating. Easiest and most delicious tart recipe.
Imperfectly Wabi Sabi Style
Cooking up & Passing down recipes the way our grandparents and their parents did
Measuring cups? Measuring spoons? Nah. We didn’t grow up with those.
Imperfectly Wabi Sabi Recipes continue the tradition of creating flavors and dishes the way our parents and their parents did – by tasting and sensing as we go.
Don’t worry. We do our best to translate into those measuring cups and spoons. You’ll pick up our love language in no time.
Recipe Notes
TOTAL TIME: 15 min prep. to make the pie crust and 1.5 hours to make and bake the tart. 1 hour and 45 min. total.
SERVES: 8-10
EQUIPMENT: A pie pan, a mixing bowl, a roller thing to flatten our your pie crust
Ingredients
This Passionfruit Lemon Tart recipe comes in two-parts: 1) the pie crust and 2) the tart.
The Crust:
- Flour – 1 and 2/3 cup (or 5/3, as I like to call it. Math.)
- Powdered Sugar – 3/4 cups
- Butter – 8 tbsp, cold and chopped into chunks
- Egg – 1 egg
The Tart:
- Passionfruit – 5 big passionfruits. Seeds in. No straining required. Pulp creates the delightful tanginess and the seeds float up due to, well, physics (it’s lighter), giving the tart its signature look, and adding a wonderful subtle pop of texture.
- Lemon – 2 big lemons, fully zested and juiced. The juicier, the better. Meyers preferred, but regular (Eurekas) are okay too.
- Granulated Sugar – 1 cup
- Heavy Cream – 3/4 cup
- Egg – 4 eggs
Instructions
This Passionfruit Lemon Tart comes in two parts: 1) the crust and 2) the tart. Rest assured, it’s all super easy. The only thing is that it does require some time with baking the tart at a low temperature to allow the mixture to come together without burning.
The Crust:
- Preheat oven to 395 degrees F
- Combine all pastry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. It’s best to use your hands to hand-knead it all together. Break up and squish up the butter cubes with your fingers and mash it together with the ingredients. Knead, punch, smash until a mound is formed, leaving only trace smudges of butter in it.
- Roll the dough out and flatten with a roller to about a little less than a pinky width of a thickness (about 1/8 an inch). Make sure thickness is evenly distributed.
- Take some oil (the regular kind you use for cooking is fine) and drizzle the tiniest amount in the pie pan (like a half-dime size) and smudge it around with your fingers to spread it out over the surface of the pie pan. (My short-cut way of greasing a pan – works like a quick charm, every time)
- Carefully transfer rolled out and smoothed out pie crust dough onto the greased pie pan
- Pinch the ends of the dough over and onto the edges of the pie pan. This will prevent the crust from further shrinking into the pan during the baking process.
- Place in oven and bake until golden brown (15-20 min.)
- Pivot to the Tart while the Crust bakes (read on)
The Tart:
- Combine all tart ingredients – the passionfruit, lemon zest, lemon juice, granulated sugar, heavy cream, eggs – in a large mixing bowl and mix together (you can even use the same bowl you mixed the dough in to save on dishes)
- Pour the tart mixture into golden brown pie crust shell
- Carefully, very carefully, place in oven at 285 degrees F for 60 – 75 minutes, until the tart is set or congealed. The little test I used to determine when the tart was finished was that I’d watch how much the tart would jiggle each time I opened the oven door. In the beginning, the tart will ripple due to its liquid state, but by the end of the baking time frame, it should jiggle just barely. Or if your oven doors aren’t that creaky, you can give it a gentle nudge with a wooden spoon,
- Let it cool to allow it to further congeal.
- Enjoy.
Kitchen Notes
- “Slow and Low” – This recipe calls for baking the tart at a low temperature for a longer period of time to ensure an even cooking and setting of the custard. The wait is worth it!
- Passionfruit – We want all of the pulp and seeds. No sieving or filtering out the seeds and pulp. The pulp adds a punch of tartness to each bite, complementing the freshness of the lemons. And the seeds add a delightful subtle contrasting crunch to perfectly balance out the smooth and creamy texture of the custard.
- Lemons – The juicier the better, which is why Meyers are preferred, but any lemon will do. If you’ve got smaller lemons, increase the lemon count to 3 (instead of 2). Make sure to fully zest each lemon. They pack a wonderful citrussy taste to the tart.
- Why wait? Most tart recipes say to cool and refrigerate the tart overnight to allow it to fully congeal, but to that, I say, “Why wait?” Enjoy this delicious Passionfruit Lemon Tart as soon as it’s cooled and you can refrigerate the left-overs. Why pass up that freshly baked crust? Enjoy once it’s cooled. Refrigerate what’s left.
- Storage – Can be kept in the refrigerator for up to a week and still be good
Grown from our very own garden
Winter and spring bring bounties of joy for us in the garden, especially when it comes time to pick all the passionfruit and citrus! This recipe was made using the passionfruit and meyer lemons grown from our very own garden where we grow our food regeneratively. Nothing beats these fresh, amazing fragrances and flavors grown right in our own garden.
Got a Few Extra Lemons?
If you’ve had enough dessert and got a few extra lemons lying around or a tree exploding with lemons, here are some non-dessert ideas on what to do with all those lemons: 5 Surprising Uses for All Those Lemons.
But who are we kidding? We’ll never get enough of this Passionfruit Lemon Tart. 🙂
Sweet but not too sweet
with all that lemony tartness.
Let us know what you think!
Did you try this recipe? Leave us a comment below or share with someone who might get a kick out of this simple, tasty dish.
To Share
Cooking feeds the soul, not just the stomach.
Imperfectly Wabi Sabi recipes are focused on creating simple, cozy comfort foods by blending family tradition, creative ways to “use what we got” – food scraps, left-overs, and all – and by using what’s in season from our very own regenerative Garden.
There’s no wasting around here. Only garden-to-table and family tradition wrapped tastefully together. Happy Wabi Sabi eats.
2 Comments
EAARL
I made this and it was exquisite!! The crunch of the passionfruit seeds put this tart into a 3rd dimension!
Imperfectly Wabi Sabi
Oh yay! And … 3rd dimension, wow!