Buttermilk tart with lemon & berries

The perks of being at home on parental leave is that you can have visitors during the week while other chumps have to work; this week an old uni friend, Lulu brought her gorgeous son Lulu Jnr for a visit to meet Jnr Mr Pink (and to see me again too, I'm sure...). Anyway, I needed a quick and easy dessert that I could make while Jnr Pink was having one of his trademark 40 min naps and this one was perfect.

The hardest part was making the lemon zest and lemon juice... which was easy. Once you've got those, its basically a matter of putting most of the ingredients in the blender and you're done...

Serves 8
Took 15 min to prepare, 30 min to cook plus cooling time

Ingredients
 - 1 cup buttermilk
 - 1/2 cup caster sugar
 - 60g butter, melted
 - 3 large egg yolks
 - 2 tbsp plain flour
 - 1 tbsp lemon zest
 - 1 tbsp lemon juice
 - 1 tsp vanilla extract
 - 1/2 tsp sea salt
 - 1 1/2 cups of mixed berries
 - 1 ready made sweet tart pastry case (or of course if you're ambitious and don't have to worry about a little baby waking up in the middle of your preparations, feel free to make your own pastry!)

Method
Step 1: Preheat a fan forced oven to 155degrees Celcius.

Step 2: Combine buttermilk, castor sugar, melted butter, egg yolks, flour, lemon zest, lemon juice, vanilla and salt in a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.

Step 3: Arrange berries over the pastry.

Note: I used frozen berries for this one, and as they were defrosting the they created a purpley-red liquid that consequently made the tart a purple-stained yellow (you'll see what I mean). To avoid this, you could try straining the berries of as much liquid as you can before putting them in the pastry.

Step 4: Pour the filling over the berries and give the pan a gentle jiggle to make sure the berries are coated.

Step 5: Bake for 30 mins, or until the filling is just set in the centre. Cool completely.

Now I actually had some of the filling left over, so I made up a couple little lemon tarts with some frozen pastry sheets I almost always have in the freezer for 'emergencies' like this...  Mr Pink assured me that without the berries it was very yummy, but with the berries it was absolutely delicious!