Fragrant, floral grapefruit shines in ultra-simple tart
-
By Kelly Song America’s Test Kitchen
While this tart looks and tastes impressive, its preparation is simple. We started by making a pat-in-pan crust with melted butter. It came together quickly and required no rolling or chilling.
To capture the subtle floral notes of grapefruit in the curd, we used fresh juice and stirred in a large amount of zest.
We also used a mix of whole eggs and yolks to prevent the tart from tasting too eggy.
Makes: 8 servings
For the crust:
1 cups flour
5 tablespoons sugar
teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
For the filling:
cup sugar
3 large eggs, plus 4 large yolks
1 tablespoon cornstarch
teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon ruby red grapefruit zest, plus 1 cup juice (2 large grapefruits)
3 tablespoons lemon juice
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled, cut into 10 pieces
6 drops red liquid food coloring
For the topping:
1 cup heavy cream
1 tablespoon granulated sugar
For the crust:
1. Adjust oven rack to middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees. Whisk flour, sugar and salt together in a large bowl. Add melted butter and stir with spatula until dough forms.
2. Using your hands, crumble two-thirds of the dough over the bottom of a 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Press dough to an even thickness in the bottom of the pan. Crumble remaining dough and scatter evenly around edge of pan, then press crumbled dough into fluted sides of pan, pressing so dough rises about inch above sides and making sure dough is pressed into corner around base of pan.
3. Place pan on a rimmed baking sheet and bake until tart shell is golden brown, 25 to 30 minutes, rotating pan halfway through baking. Let the tart shell cool on the sheet while preparing filling.