As promised yesterday on my Twitter, here are the amazing lemon tarts that I made over the weekend!  I adapted a recipe that I found on another pretty awesome blog called Pixel Whisk.  On her blog she made lemon handpies!  They looked so tasty and flaky and well all around amazing, I decided to try and make the recipe.  

I have tons of lemons on my lemon tree still.  If you all recall I made Organic Lemonade with these lemons and let me tell you the picture below doesn't even do this tree justice!  We still have so many lemons I don't even know what to do with them all.  I think I am going to have to start juicing them and freezing the juice and/ or giving them away to family and friends.

Also, yes I do know that the tree is over grown but we don't like to cut the tree when there are lemons still growing on it. 

Anywho...  Back to the tarts...

Like I said above the amazing Pixel Whisk made these beautiful handpies and I knew right away that I was never going to be able to replicate them fully for several reasons but the main one is because I have never made a lemon curd before.  Even now after making it, I still don't think that I made it right but my tarts turned out super tasty and one of my good friends, The Bubbly Brunette, tasted them today and she gave me the yummy approval so I decided that I would for sure share my experience and what I think I will do differently next time.

To start it all off I followed the Pixel Whisk recipe for the lemon curd to a T!

I squeezed my lemons (using my handy dandy juicer from IKEA) and set aside for when it was time to add it.  I put the sugar (organic granulated) and the yolks together in the saucepan and heated till combined.  Then I added the juice and zest of the lemons.  Here is when I think I went wrong...

I believe I did not let the curd mixture thicken enough because I was super worried that I would get some weird cooked eggs.  But I rolled with it because at this point I didn't know that it mattered how long to cook it, I thought it was thick enough and as it cooled with the butter it would thicken more.  Next time though I will for sure cook it a bit longer.

I also do not have the correct whisking apparatus for my pots so I used this cute egg spatula (figured it was fitting and it is small) and rolled with it.  Can you tell that I am a first timer or what?!

As that cooled I began the wheat flour crust.  I used the same recipe on the Pixel Whisk blog but I did not add the walnuts (boyfriend doesn't like them).  After everything cooled and sat in the refrigerator for the allotted time I began the process of putting the tarts together.
This is when I really noticed that the lemon curd was too thin because it would not stay put in the middle of the bottom half of the pies.  So in a leap of faith I used the dough not for hand pies but for tarts.  I used a muffin tin to form the crust (I used a regular muffin pan and only filled the cups with dough but only half way) and filled the tart crust with the curd.
I continued to follow the recipe, with out the egg wash, by putting the tarts in the oven at 400 for about 16-20 minutes.

Then VOILA!

My first lemon tarts were born!

Since my lemons are super sour I decided to add half a blackberry to the top of the tart (my own twist) to cut some of the tartness.

Also because most my pictures didn't turn out that well (like the one above) I made sure to get a yummy side angle to show you all the amazingness that were these tarts (that's right folks, they are all gone).

So if you are in the mood for some pretty amazing little hand pies or in my case tarts you can find the recipe at Pixel Whisk.

Thanks friends!

Oh and I wanted to mention that I also shared this with

"Amerirish Corned Beef"

Every year I have a tradition of making corned beef on St. Pat's Day and this year was no different. I started the tradition originally about 13 years ago when I met my boyfriend.  His entire family is Irish and I thought to help bring a part of his family into our little family this would be a good tradition.  Some years I go big with lots of treats too but some years (like this one) I am just to busy and stick to just corned beef.

But I wanted to share it with you, especially since some of the side items came from a little adventure my daughter and I had last weekend at the Heirloom Farmers Market here in Tucson.  We found huge carrots and amazing little white potatoes.  The carrots though were so big and plump they were bigger than my hand (and my hands are huge!)

Any who...

I made this corned beef in my crock pot (like I do every year) but this year I changed it up just a bit.  I would normally follow my same recipe but this year I couldn't because I didn't have a bottle of Guinness. *GASP*  So instead I used a bottle of Bud Lite...hehehehe.  I am calling this the "Amerirish Corned Beef".

I have to say that this was the best corned beef dish I have ever made! I ate pretty much the majority of the meat and definitely most of the amazing carrots!  And when I say most I mean out of the crock pot I ate most of it by myself, hehehehe. My boyfriend also loved this meal and said he would never have known I didn't use Guinness!  Check my recipes page for the recipe :)

After this amazing meal I made the kiddos a treat (which I wasn't going to do but my amazing boyfriend ran to the store special for me to make it).  I made the kiddos a rice crispy skill bar but I used lucky charms.  I owe a big thank you not only to my boyfriend but to a co-worker who inspired me to make them.  She actually blogs too and you can see here over at the Bubbly Brunette.

So to this St. Patrick's day, Cheers and I hope everyone was safe and happy!