I’m still getting used to this whole gluten-free lifestyle.  Today I had friends over for lunch and it was truly the first time I was sad I couldn’t eat something.

I served a white wine chicken salad (calm down, Trader Joe’s) on their pretzel croissant rolls.

I took a deep breath of the gluteny goodness as I prepared mine on a less pretzel and even less croissant like bread.

Sigh.

Now that I’ve become one of  “those people” who has dietary restrictions I knew that I needed to start baking gluten-free or risk losing weight.

We can’t have that now.

I came across this recipe on pinterest and decided that it fit the bill.

Except I didn’t have almond flour so I used almond meal

And I didn’t make lemon curd, I just bought a jar of it.

Hey now, I said this was easy.

Lemon Blueberry Tart Recipe with Almond Crust:

Crust

2.5 cups Almond Meal

5 tablespoons butter

1 egg  (Oops, it says egg white but I used a whole egg)

Now that I’m reading the original recipe I realize I forgot to add the pinch of salt.  Huh.  You should probably do that.

I also did 3 tablespoons of sugar.

I used a pastry cutter to cut chilled butter into the almond meal.  I then added egg and just mixed it all by hand.  I pressed it into my pie tart pan that I first sprayed with cooking spray. The crust was sort of goopy feeling so I stuck the whole thing into the freezer to chill.  I don’t know how long.  I was very distracted.  Maybe 15- 20 minutes?

While it was in the freezer, oven was on 400.  Once it was chilled I put it in oven for 15 minutes.  Honestly, I think it could have used a little longer but I was in the middle of throwing chicken nuggets at my kids for lunch.   The original recipe said not to over cook so I didn’t.  It was perfectly fine and it’s possible I’m thinking CRUST and this was more chewy than crispy.  It was probably perfect.

Curd:

If you want homemade follow original recipe.  I’m sure it is delicious.  Even though I’ve made curd before, I was short on time so JAR CURD IT IS.  You can find this in a grocery store by….I think the Jelly section?

I thought the curd was a little too strong on its own so I added the whole jar of curd to a whole package of cream cheese and blended it using a blender.  I then squeezed some lemon juice (one slice?) and added some zest too.  I did this all to taste.

Put it all together

I took the crust out of the oven, I let it cool and then put it in freezer to cool quicker because I was running out of time.  (I’m very poor at time management)

Once cooled, I used a spatula to spread the filling and then topped with blueberries because the store was out of strawberries.

In the end it turned out delicious.

P.S. But seriously, can you believe I took that picture?   #WorstPhotographerEver