Vegan Lemon Tart

Since joining Steemit, I’ve committed myself to post a recipe at least a few times a week if not daily. At the start I was able to blog daily. It was still summer, the days were longer, and I felt that I had more time to prepare things and organise myself. At the same time, I was using my iPhone for taking pictures to showcase the dish of the day. However, I soon realised that the quality of the pictures was as important if not more important than the recipe or the text itself. I therefore moved to my Canon 600D and felt more compelled to prepare, arrange, and illustrate each event leading to the final dish. This added an extra 30 minutes if not an hour to the whole process. Sometimes I would be so unhappy with the pictures that I would rather not put up the post for the day. Other times I would restart the process a few times until I’ve got the gist of things.

Life is an eternal learning experience. Of course, I knew that. But it never felt so true since I’ve started blogging on Steemit. I could easily prepare something quick and cheap that I wouldn’t eat and showcase it as something amazing for others to try. However, it wouldn’t be honest and ultimately it would betray the trust than some of the regulars to my blog have entrusted me. So now I tend to pace myself with how and when I blog. Generally, if I blog something it means that the day before I would have try a variant of the recipe to make sure it meets all the criteria I set myself as a foodie. It must be simple, from easily sourced ingredients and looks and tastes amazing.

To try and encourage more Steemians to read my post I’ve also tried to enter different contests to get some notoriety. One contest I’ve been participating week in week out is by the @cookwithus crew. This week’s theme is vegan. So, I’ve been trying a few different options over the past few days. I’m yet to decide the entry I’ll make for the contest. In my quest for an appealing dish I came across a vegan lemon tarts from Tina Khoury (The Barefoot Housewife). This recipe is all I could ask for: simple, colourful and yummy. I had to give it a try. Obviously, since it is appearing today I won’t be entering it for the contest, but it means that I’ve got my mind set already on what my contest entry will be. And I really hope I could pull it as it involves some vegan ingredients used in an unlikely fashion. Enough said for now.

As for this Vegan Lemon tarts it was quite a technical challenge to pull. Right in the middle of processing the nuts and seeds, I managed to burn down the food processor. There was literally smoke coming out of the machine. I had to go buy a brand new one. And $200 later I was crushing my way through creating the base. And later in the afternoon I even managed to crack a base with hot water, which then went into the power plug causing the switch to go off and prompting our alarm monitoring company to call us advising of a power failure. Let’s just say it’s been a costly vegan lemon tart.



Ingredients

The Base 

• 1 cup raw almonds 
• 1 cup pitted dates 
• 1/2 cup shredded coconut 

The lemon filling 

• 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice 
• 3/4 cup full fat coconut cream 
• 1/3 cup rice malt syrup 
• 1 tbs lemon zest 
• 1/2 tsp powdered Agar Agar 
• A tiny pinch of turmeric
  

Method

For the base 

1. Put all the ingredients in a food processor and blend until the mixture sticks together. Make sure not to blend too much to leave some texture. 










2. Press mixture evenly into mini tart tins. Chill in the fridge and move on to make the filling.  

The filling 

1. Heat all the ingredients, except the Agar Agar, in a small pot on low heat. Once heated through, whisk in the Agar Agar. Bring mixture to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for a few minutes. Allow the mixture to cool a little. 





2. Pour into bases and chill in the fridge for a few hours. Decorate with fruit or edible flowers.
   

I hope you enjoy it! 

Bon appetit!