We love a good lemon tart — the perfect spring dessert! And this one is made with a bit of plain yogurt to give it a light and airy texture. By combining homemade lemon curd with the yogurt, it makes a beautiful tart that doesn’t need anything else but a fork! We also used lemon cream sandwich cookies for the crust … think Oreo cookie crust, but lemon! 🍋 If you love lemon desserts, you’re gonna have to give this one a try! We also love Lemon Lime Bars and Lemon Curd Cupcakes, in case you’re in the mood for more lemon ideas!
When making a tart, one of the big decisions is what kind of crust you want. You can always go with a traditional crumbly and buttery shortbread tart crust, or you can make a flourless crust with almond meal or nuts, or you can use crushed lemon cookies as your crust, which is what we did with this recipe. Homemade Lemon Shortbread Cookies work beautifully
We used Dare’s delicious lemon cream sandwich cookies, but if you cannot find that brand, there are usually lemon cream cookies at your local grocer’s. We also tried making the crust with Lemon Shortbread Cookies, and while these cookies are delicious, the cookies with the cream centers made a better crust in our opinion. It was really good, but not as fabulous as the crust with the lemon cream cookies! We’ve found several types of lemon cookies at our local grocery stores, and all of them will work for this crust.
Light Lemon Tart
Equipment
- 1 9 or 10-inch tart pan Our tart pan is 9.5 inches in diameter
- 1 Food processor
Ingredients
Lemon Cookie Crust
- 2 cups puréed cookie crumbs about 5 oz. of cookies
- 3 tbsp. melted butter
Lemon Filling
- 6 large eggs
- 1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 tbsp. butter (salted) cut into small pieces
- 2 tsp. lemon zest
- 3/4 cup nonfat plain Greek yogurt we like to use the strained kind of yogurt for this
- 1 lemon, sliced for garnish
- blueberries or blackberries and edible flowers for garnish
Instructions
Lemon Cookie Crust
- Preheat oven to 350℉.
- Prepare a 9.5 inch tart pan (with a removable bottom) by thoroughly coating the sides and bottom with a thin coat of butter. Be sure to get the butter into the side grooves of the pan. Sometimes it’s easiest to use your fingers to do this. This will help you to remove the tart from the pan when you’re ready to serve dessert. Set aside.
- Process lemon cookies until fine crumbs. Pour into a mixing bowl and stir in melted butter. Mix well.
- Dump this mixture into the prepared pan and pat it to evenly cover the bottom and into the sides of the pan. Bake for about 10 minutes. Remove from oven and cool completely.
Lemon Filling
- Whisk eggs and sugar together in a saucepan or in the top of a double boiler. Add lemon juice, lemon zest and butter. Heat over medium-low heat, stirring constantly with a wire whisk, until mixture thickens so it will coat the back of a spoon. Remove from heat. Set aside until completely cool. If making ahead of time, cover the lemon curd with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to use.
- If you see any lumps of egg in your curd, you can simply strain it through a sieve when you remove it from the heat. Push the curd through the sieve using a spoon or rubber spatula. Be sure to scrape the curd that’s left on the bottom of the sieve into your bowl of strained curd. Then cool completely and cover until ready to use. The lemon zest will make it through the sieve, but the lumps will stay in the sieve.
- When you are ready to make the filling, gently fold the yogurt into the chilled lemon curd. Pour into prepared crust and smooth out with an off-set spatula.
- Garnish with lemon slices, berries and flowers. Chill until ready to serve.
