Long-time readers of this blog know I absolutely adore our native dayap (limes). Dayap has a fragrance that is so clean, brisk, bracing and freshly citrusy. I purchased several kilos of dayap a while back and still had some in the fridge, so I decided to make some dayap curd and then try a dayap curd tart with the leftover dough from the lemon tarts I made last week. If you want a simple dayap tart, just change the lemon rind and juice in the lemon tart recipe to dayap zest and juice instead. Alternatively, you could try an even easier Dayap Pie a la Marketman that I featured a year or more ago…
But if you want to make some dayap curd, follow this very simple recipe which is from Ina Garten’s The Barefoot Contessa cookbook. Remove the zest of about 8 medium sized fresh dayap (I use a microplane zester) and add them to 1.5 cups of granulated sugar in a food processor. Blitz for several seconds until the zest is very fine and when you smell the mixture you instantly feel like a dirty t-shirt being drowned in citrus-scented detergent… I kid you not, the fragrance of this sugar and lime zest mixture is one of the most amazing natural perfumes you will ever smell. I have no idea why people would sniff rugby if they could sniff this.
Next, with an electric mixer, cream 1/2 cup of unsalted butter together with the sugar and lime zest. Add 4 very large eggs or 5 medium eggs, one at a time and make sure they are well-incorporated. Add 1/8 teaspoon of salt and mix well. Pour the mixture into a saucepan and stir with a whisk over low to medium heat until the mixture thickens, about 12-13 minutes. Remove from the heat and pour into a PRE-BAKED tart shell (see recipe here) and let it “set” at room temperature (in the tropics, like Manila, you may want to stick this in a fridge). If you don’t use the curd as a filling for a tart, it makes the perfect sauce to ladle over rich buttery Vargas or homemade butter cake. You can also put the curd on ice cream or muffins or other baked goods. We made several dayap tarts with the leftover dough and sent them to friends… and in the next post, see how you can jazz up a simple dayap tart with fresh fruit!
15 Responses
All I can say is “I want some!” :-) Your presentation is just so “purdy!” I’d even eat the cellophane & ribbon too! Without “googling” . . . but what is “dayap?”
I find nothing too amiss about your fascination with this fragrance coming myself from a home where fondness for our native dayap almost amounted to a fetish. We dispensed of making (leche) flan if we did not have any dayap on hand and when our tree that grew within reach from our dining room window bore fruit, most of the fruit ended up with my mom’s sister who supplied Manila Hotel with her sapin-sapin. We wrung wedges of the fruit that cracked during the rainy season over the meat and coral squeezed from raw salted talangka. The yema creme patisiere filling for braza mercedez that you said could have benefited from a touch of dayap flavour was right on, that was exactly how we made them at home. Although I do not doubt at all your assertion, I shall rest content only when I finally confirm that this our very own citrus are indeed the same as Florida’s Key limes.
While still in the vicinity and subject, I thought I’d add that most of the crew of privateers that infested the Caribbean in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were British subjects who treated symptoms of their sea-borne vitamin C deficiency with lime juice, that’s how they ended up being endearingly called limeys, arrrr.
The dayap tart does look yummy! I love anything citrus-y. All I need is to polish my dough skills… The way you ‘packaged’ it is simple and as usual, classy.
The dayap curd drizzled on the butter cake looks wonderful. Salivating as I write this!
The perfume from grated dayap has a floral round tone to it, unlike the cleansing abrasive smell of lemons (or calamansi). I had a polvoron once with hints of dayap, but I prefer it with pastillas de leche or leche flan to cut the sugar.
I have always believed that packaging adds 1/3 (if not more) to the pleasure of giving/receiving a gift. A well packaged/wrapped gift tells the recipient that the giver thought beyond the gift itself but to the visual delight of actually holding suh a beautiful package in one’s hands.
Such a pretty dayap curd tart and lovely satin bow! I would even forgive the giver if the tart didn’t taste as good as it looked!(‘Tho I am sure it tasted wonderful!)
(MM, could you show us zest from a microplane and zest from a regular zest-er? Just want to know the diff.)
CecileJ, zest from a microplane zester is much thinner, and very little of the bitter white pith is shaved off with the skin. You can see a good picture of lemon zest using a microplane here. And here is photo of a portion of a microplane zester, together with some dayap/lime zest. A regular zester or one done with a knife tends to be thicker and INCLUDES more of the bitter pith.
Looks great! How about a blue ribbon for this? I hope you still have some of the dayap fruits in your fridge…you could use some with canned pineapple juice, about 6dayaps to 1 tall can. Add the grated peel and the juice, some sugar and lots of ice cubes. I’m not sure though if it would go well with the tart, you might get a dayap overdose ;)
Apicio, i’ve always known limes were used to prevent scurvy onboard ships, but I never made the connection to “limey”, haha. Good one.
allen, unfortunately, I am allergic to pineapples, so it is the one fruit that I don’t eat these days… particularly fresh pineapples…
Yum.. what about my commitment to losing weight.. damn.. ;)
great with fresh whipped cream on top!
You are really a master at packaging, MM! I love how you put so much thought into putting something that’s already wonderful on it own, into something that tips the balance over to perfection.
By the way, I agree with Mila. The lemon curd on Vargas butter cake is inspired.
Mr. Marketman,
The Dayap Curd & Tart looks really yummy!!! I will definitely try this at home.
I would like to ask for the contact nos. of Vargas for their yummy butter cake. Thanks and more power to you.
Lenlen
Huhuhu. How come it’s so hard to find dayap nowadays in regular supermarkets?
This entry makes me drool. When I find dayaps available I want to try making it.