Well, it’s about that time of year again…

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a uncontrollable, somewhat dangerous obsession with Girl Scout cookies. Somehow or other, whether it be through family, friends, work, or even in the parking lots of grocery stores, everyone is going to have the chance to get some and most of us would be hard pressed to pass them up.  I remember when my younger cousins were Girl Scouts and we ordered boxes and boxes of cookies- I don’t quite know how it works specifically, but I think the gist of it is that the more cookies that a Girl Scout sells, the more badges she gets. I think we ended up giving away Girl Scout cookies to anyone who would take them that year- just so we wouldn’t have too many in the house. Anything for the cause, right?

I hate wasting food. Hate, hate, hate it. I’m the person in my house that will continue to eat the leftovers after the third, fourth or even fifth day. And maybe longer than that. Don’t judge me. I’ve never gotten food poisoning before and until I do, I will likely continue this habit. Throwing perfectly good food away seriously gets on my nerves – especially if it’s something that I cooked, or something I know I can cook into something great. That little pet peeve was where my inspiration for this recipe basically came from. We ended up with an excess amount of Girl Scout cookies in my house- like we do every year- and rather than toss them, I wanted to find something to do with them. This is what I came up with.

I’ve made no bake tart crusts before with vanilla wafers, so I saw no reason why I couldn’t do the same with Girl Scout cookies. One thing I hadn’t made before was lemon curd. I’d seen the Barefoot Contessa do it, so I decided to take pointers from her recipe. I did find however, that I needed to chill my curd rather than just let it set at room temperature. The taste is AWESOME, but the curd didn’t set up as firm as I would have preferred it to be. That’s on me though: the daylight was fading fast and I needed to hurry and do the photo  shoot before I lost the invaluable tool of photography that’s called natural light, so I took it out of the fridge early. Ideally I probably would’ve left it there for another hour, but I don’t think it looks all that bad… Right?

I’m really proud of how this turned out. I don’t even like lemon desserts all that much and this still sold me enough to want it again. I’m also already brainstorming other Girl Scout cookie combinations I could use for this concept. We’ll just leave that on a ‘To Be Continued” note, shall we?

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Girl Scout Cookie Lemon Tart

Recipe Adapted from Ina Garten and Allrecipes.com

CLICK HERE FOR PRINTABLE VERSION

Ingredients

Cookie Crust

• 3 packages of Lemon Girl Scout Cookies, or any other Lemon Sandwich cookies (about 30)
• 6 tablespoons butter, melted

Lemon Curd Filling

• 4 Lemons at room temperature
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/4 pound (1 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
• 4 extra-large eggs, at room temperature
• 1/8 teaspoon salt

Directions

1. For the cookie crust: place lemon cookies into a food processor and pulse until very finely crushed. You can also place cookies in a sealed plastic bag and use a rolling pin to finely crush.

2. Mix melted butter with cookie crumbs. Press mixture onto bottom and side up of a greased 9-inch tart pan, or deep pie plate. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

3. For lemon curd filling: Remove the zest of the lemons with a vegetable peeler or zester, being careful to avoid the white pith. Squeeze the lemons to make 1/2 cup of juice and set the juice aside.

4. Put the zest in a food processor fitted with a steel blade. Add the sugar and process for 2 to 3 minutes, until the zest is very finely minced.

5.  In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream the butter with the sugar and lemon zest. Add the eggs, 1 at a time, and then add the lemon juice and salt. Mix until combined.

6. Pour the mixture into a 2-quart saucepan and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until thickened, about 10 minutes. The lemon curd will thicken at about 175 degrees F, or just below a simmer. If need be, GRADUALLY increase the heat until curd reaches appropriate temp. Remove from the heat.

7. Fill the tart shell with warm lemon curd. Refrigerate overnight to allow lemon curd to set.

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