Peaceful Days of Spring | Embracing Slow Life in English Countryside | Gentle May Beginnings

Slow and gentle spring living in English countryside.
I've been spending a lot of time with family last week, hence no video! Sorry! I wanted to share some of my slow living experience with you and thoughts on mindfulness and love languages in this video. I hope it brings you some peace and joy today.

Mini Lemon Tarts (can be made into one big tart or a flat square lemon sheet cake instead if you don't have a proper baking sheet)

Pie crust -
-125g plain flour
-75g ground almonds
-50g sugar
-100g cold butter
-1 egg yolk
-3-4 tbsp ice water
-pinch of salt
Mix together plain flour, almond flour, salt and sugar. Add cold cubed butter and rub between your hands to make corse crumb.
Add 1 egg yolk, mix.
Add 3-4 tbsp of ice water to soften your dough and make in easier to work with. Add water 1 tbsp at a time and mix each time - the dough should come together firm but not sticky! If needed, add less liquid.
(BTW if you're gluten free, you can use gluten free flour for these tarts - I made both versions and they turned out equally good.)
Chill the dough in the fridge for at least 1h or overnight.
Shape into little mini tarts onto a greased pan (I used a muffin pan and liners, but you can shape it however you want), line with baking paper or additional muffin liners on top and put some baking beads (or rice/ beans) and bake for 10 mins at 180C/ 355F. Then remove the weights and top liners and bake for additional 5 mins until golden in colour.
Wait until the baked crust has completely cooled down before filling with curd.

Lemon curd filling:
-Zest of 2 lemons
-Juice of 3 lemons
-5 egg yolks
-200g sugar
-75g butter
Add egg yolks and sugar into a bowl and mix well. Then zest 2 lemons and squeeze the juice of 3 lemons (I had help there hehe :) ). It's best to use a sieve when squeezing your lemons to catch all the unwanted seeds.
Add juice and zest into a bowl with sugar and eggs.
Place a bowl over a pan with hot boiling water using a Bain Marie method. Keep stirring your curd until it thickens. It may take from 5 to 45 minutes - when I made this for the first time, it took about 45 minutes as I used a very heatproof bowl. Second time I made this in a ceramic bowl and it took me about 5-10 mins. The curd is ready when it thickens and coats the spatula with a glossy liquid.
Remove from the Bain Marie, strain through the sieve into a separate bowl and add butter. Mix well until butter melts, then cover with cling film pushing it down right on top of your curd.
Wait until it cools down completely.

I also whipped some double cream with sugar to add as an extra layer into these tarts - this helps to achieve a milder flavour.
Add lemon curd on top and decorate with berries!

Enjoy! :)

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Find me on Instagram:
www.instagram.com/dariashew

Filmed on: Fujifilm XH2S with 33mm f1/4
Edited with: Premiere Pro CC
Music: Epidemic Sound

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key words: #cottagecore #slowliving #simpleliving
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