When I was grocery shopping last Saturday, I saw the mandarins and knew immediately that I would use them to make a Pie. A pie crust ended up in my cart and the only thing I needed was something to add flavor. Mandarins are nice as a snack, but as the only fruit in a pie their flavor would not be strong enough to compete with the crust. Frantically, I was going through my pantry and ‘Eureka’ … lemon curd. This Mandarin Lemon Curd Pie comes out of the oven bubbly, tart and sweet at the same time.
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Key Ingredients in This Recipe
You’ll find the complete list of ingredients and exact quantities in the recipe below.
- Pie crust – store-bought or your own recipe
- Mandarins
- Lemon curd – store-bought or self-made. How to make lemon curd is explained in this recipe of Lemon Curd Dessert with Berries.
- Egg
- Turbinado sugar
Making this pie is a rather simple concept. Most of the work is in cutting the segments of fruit from between the membranes. That takes a little bit of practice if you’ve never done it before. I’ve written a post about this technique. With a thin and sharp knife it is not that difficult, just time consuming. When you start cutting the segments, make sure you work above a bowl, catching the fruit juice that will drip from you hands. Once you have all the segment from a mandarin, squeeze the left over fruit and you’ll even have more juice.
Once you have the fruit segments, you can ‘construct the pie’. Cover the bottom of the pie crust with a layer of mandarin segments (leave a border of 1.5-2 inches). Spread with lemon curd. Then the next layer is fruit segments again. Fold the edge of the dough over, toward the middle. Brush the dough with egg wash and sprinkle with turbinado sugar. Bake the pie for approx. 30 minutes. Cool and cut and share and enjoy.
Mandarin Lemon Curd Pie
Pin Recipe FacebookIngredients
- 1 pie crust, store-bought
- 6-8 whole mandarins
- 2 jars lemon curd
- 1 egg, beaten
- turbinado sugar
Instructions
- Heat oven to 425°F.
- Unroll the pie crust and line a pie dish with the crust or line a baking sheet with parchment paper, and form a 8-9 inch circle.
- Segment the mandarins: Slice a little off the top and bottom and place the mandarin on one of the cut sides.Trim away the skin and pith. Use a small or flexible knife and start at the top and slice downwards following the curve of the fruit. Cut away as much of the skin and pith as possible, but don’t cut too deep, because you will take too much of the fruit. Turn the fruit around and cut off the pieces that you missed.
- Slip the paring knife between one of the segments and the connective membrane and slice toward the middle of the fruit, allow the membrane to guide the knife. Do the same on the other side of the segment and you can ‘scoop’ the segment out of the fruit, by turning the knife. Repeat the same procedure with all segments. At the end you have a mandarin in your hand that only has the membranes left.
- Place the mandarin segments in a colander and allow them to drain.
- Cover the bottom of the pie with one layer of mandarin segments.
- Cover the fruit segment with the lemon curd.
- The last layer is mandarin segments again.
- Fold the crust around the filling. Brush edges of the crust with beaten egg and sprinkle with turbinado sugar.
- Place Mandarin Lemon Curd Pie in oven and bake for approx. 30 minutes.
- Allow to cool and cut to serve.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.