Spring BBQ!

This weekend my friendship group had our first Spring BBQ. It was a beautiful 27 degrees C, much better than we have been getting lately! As usual I offered to bring dessert just because I love taking desserts places. 

Because it so warm I decided that something that brought a freshness to the air would be good. I adapted a recipe from a lemon curd tart to a lemon, passionfruit and lime curd tart with a meringue kiss on top. Here is the final result:

Because all of my friends love meringue I actually used the leftover meringue and took a tuppaware full of it that rather quickly got eaten (along with the Malteasers and M&M's we found). I enjoy adapting recipes to make them my own, needless to say when you do that sometimes you don't get the results or ease of which you intended. 

For the tart I got rid of the pastry base, mostly because i didn't have the time to make the pastry perfect. Instead I made a biscuit base and just put it on the bottom of the patty pan as otherwise it would not hold its shape. In hindsight I think it is worth the time making the pastry the biscuit base was lovely but it was a bit heavy for the tart and it crumbled very easily. 

For the curd part of the tart I adapted the recipe I was using to include lime juice and passionfruit pulp. Next time I add the passionfruit in I think I need to add more passionfruit than lemon and lime as they tended to hide the passionfruit. 

The meringue I used a basic meringue recipe and do what I usually do when I make meringue. I left them the over to cook at the low temperature for 1 hour and a half and then turned off the oven and left them in the oven to completely cool down over night. This allows for them to stabilize but also to get that yummy soft gooey inside.

Here is the recipe 
Base 

Ingredients 

• 1 cup self raising flour 
• 1 cup brown sugar 
• 1 cup melted butter 
• 1 cup desiccated coconut 

Method 

• Preheat oven to 180 degrees C.
• Add all ingredients and mix until well combined.  
• Line muffin pan with patty cases and press biscuit mix firmly onto the bottom making sure that it is even.
• Place in oven and bake for 5-10 minutes until golden. 

Curd
This recipe was actually gotten from the taste website 
http://www.taste.com.au/recipes/20071/lemon+lime+curd+tarts

I added 1/4 cup of passionfruit pulp. If you don't have any passionfruits you can do what I did and use the passionfruit in a can (I usually have a few of these lying around the house).
Also you can use the lemon and lime juice from bottle if you don't have any lemons or limes it still works really well. 

Meringue 

Ingredients

• 4 egg whites
• pinch of salt 
• 1 cup of caster sugar 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste 

Method

• Preheat oven to 120 degrees C.
• Line baking tray and spray with a light coating of oil. 
• In a mix master combine all ingredients and beat on high until stiff peaks form. 
• Use a piping bag or spoon shape the meringue on the trays (because I made kisses I has about 6 trays in total).
• Place meringues in the oven and drop the temperature to 90 degrees C. 
• Leave in for an hour and a half. Then turn the oven off completely and leave till the oven cools down (3-4 hours) or (what I personally do) leave in the oven overnight.

Happy baking everyone.