Hark! A Dessert! A Lime Tart, In Fact!

As I've said before, I'm not so into sweets. A pint of ice cream can sit in my freezer for months, and I just won't feel like eating it. A bag of chips on the other hand? I'm a goner. They may last minutes. As a result of this indifference towards the sweeter things, I don't post a whole lot of desserts on here...but this, my friends, was a delicious dessert, worthy of posting. And soooo easy.

Don't worry, the dessert itself isn't lime juice.

I have an aversion to baking - well, it's more than an aversion - I think I don't like baking because I'm not very good at it. The measuring, the levelling, the dry with the dry and the wet with the wet, it's too fussy. I get impatient and quite often I end up with a sub-par product. Like the whoopie pies I tried to make on my birthday, which, by the way, were FROM A MIX. But you were supposed to dollop out these dainty little individual pies onto wax paper and use TWO baking sheets and the first dainty little dollop got mucked up and stuck and the wax paper moved and I swore and then put the whole thing in a loaf pan. Things in loaf pans don't really scream 'dainty'. Then I had the BRILLIANT idea of slicing the loaf in half horizontally and putting the white, weird, mallow-y filling in the middle like a big fat loaf sandwich and I swear to god the whole thing was disgusting and people only ate it at one in the morning when they were too drunk to notice it tasted like chocolate chalk with marshmallow glue in the middle. And that's just one example of a pretty significant baking failure.

But this li'l tart here is delicious and bright-tasting and requires very little effort. All of six ingredients, with a big fat citrus punch (much different than a big fat loaf sandwich). I loooove the citrus. In the hierarchy of sweet things that I like, I think I would put sour keys at the top, citrus-based desserts in the middle, creme brulee somewhere in there, and chocolate at the bottom. Nothing against chocolate, just isn't my fave. And sour cream and onion chips beat all of those things. So it's relative.

Note that you need a tart pan for this recipe. I bought one for a cool five bucks at my local mega-conglomerate grocery store. Bully for me!

Lime Tart
Recipe source:  Everybody Likes Sandwiches, a fantastic Vancouver food blog - www.everybodylikessandwiches.com

This is what baking success looks like.
It's rare for me.

For the tart shell:

1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs        (I bought graham crackers and smashed the crap out of them - first I put them in a big ziploc and bashed them with a cast iron pan, but then the bag broke. So I just sort of crushed them in a bowl and then got them quite fine with a pestle - ha I just had to google 'mortar and pestle which is which' to write that instruction)
2 tbsp of white sugar
5 tbsp of butter, melted

For the filling:

3 eggs
1 300 mL can of sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup of lime juice (about 4 limes)
2 tsp of lime zest (about 2 limes)         (I use a microplane - if you don't have one, you should buy one - it's a good $12 or so investment)


Preheat the oven to 350F. Mix the graham cracker crumbs with the sugar and melted butter until well incorporated. Press the crumb mixture into the tart pan, making sure to press it up along the sides as well as the bottom. Pop it in the preheated oven for 10 to 15 minutes. Let it cool.

Zesty!

While your tart shell is baking, beat the three eggs in a bowl until they're frothy. You could certainly do this with a whisk, but an electric mixer is less laborious. Add in the can of sweetened condensed milk, and beat with the eggs for five minutes. Add in the lime juice and zest, mix it all up, and pour it into the cooled graham cracker crumb tart. Back in the oven for 10 to fifteen, and bob's your uncle, you just baked dessert! And you didn't screw it up! The tart should be set, and not jiggly anymore. Once it's cooled, stick her in the fridge to cool for a while (or overnight).

I served it with unsweetened whipped cream. You could add some sugar to your whipped cream, but I thought the tart was sweet enough without it. So I'm saying I don't think you should.