I will admit, I procrastinated with my Pride dessert this year. Namely because I was almost not going to do one at all for 2024. I have made many a Pride dessert in the past, and while they were all tons of fun to conceptualize and admire after making them, the actual assembly of each rainbow-colored dessert was…less than optimal. Trying to individually color a component 7 different hues takes a lot of time, so usually I end up taking anywhere from 2-3 hours to make a rainbow colored dessert when it would take usually 45 minutes to make it uncolored. And I was having a bit of pastry cook’s block when it came to what to do this year. I thought about doing this lychee-white rabbit candy mousse cake thing, but I got gifted a ton of lemons right before I was going to make it. And when life gives you lemons, make something lemon-flavored with it. In this case, I am making a lemon curd tart with a panko pate sucre, a vanilla marshmallow, and rainbow colored tuiles. This lemon tart is a callback to one of my personal favorites: the Sunny-Joy Lemon Tart. A little bit of story time here, but back when I was in college, my friend Joy and I had a little under the table cupcake and dessert business called Sunny-Joy Bake Shop. It was lowkey, very cute, and Joy was the one who suggested it because she was inspired by the sitcom Two Broke Girls. The name of the business was my Chinese name, meaning morning sun, and her Chinese/American name, both meaning joy, squished together. And with a baking business with that kind of name, we needed to have a peppy, bright dessert. So we sold these cute little lemon tarts with a crunchy, buttery, panko-infused shortbread crust. And that was the Sunny-Joy Lemon Tart.

Sunny-Joy Bake Shop will always be happy memories, and one of my fondest was seeing Joy when she visited me all these years later! We both live very separate lives now, her still in Boston and me back in SoCal, but these are the kinds of memories I will always cherish, and am proud of. Hence why I figured, between wanting to make a Pride dessert and being gifted all of these lemons, that the Sunny-Joy Lemon Tart should be revisited, and brought back in the form of this lemon marshmallow rainbow tart instead! For the components, we still have the panko-infused pate brisee, which is a sweet, buttery dough with crispy, crackly bits from the panko and a smooth, tangy lemon curd. In lieu of a torched meringue, since I wanted lighter colors to compliment the rainbow colors of the tuiles, I went with a Swiss meringue marshmallow, one of my new favorite dessert creations. This marshmallow is more stable than my first two relationships, and has a cloud-like texture. The perfect foil with all of the rich, buttery components between the pastry, lemon curd, and the tuiles. Oh the tuiles. These rainbow butterfly tuiles had me working roughly 2 hours to make them. I used a Pavoni butterfly tuile mold, and they took 14 minutes per color to bake. So 14 times 7 because I was dumb and didn’t realize I only had one mold meant that I spent a little under an hour and 40 minutes just baking the darn things. And while it was hell on earth to prep this dessert, assembly was a ton of fun, and *almost* made up for it. I keep telling myself, never again with these rainbow-colored Pride desserts, but every single year, I still rally(because I love my LGBTQ community) and make sure that one gets done for the month of June.

For the pate brisee:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 stick unsalted butter
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
1/4 cup panko breadcrumbs

In a bowl, mix together the flour, butter, sugar, baking powder, and salt together to form a crumbly mixture. Add to that the egg yolk first, then the breadcrumbs to form a dough. Refrigerate the dough for 10 minutes first. Then roll out the dough on a floured surface to 1/16-inch thickness. Transfer to a 9-inch round tart tin and trim the edges. Prick the bottom of the dough. Weigh with parchment and baking weights and bake at 375 degrees F for 25 minutes, then remove the baking weights and bake for another 10 minutes so that the base of the dough is browned too. Cool completely before filling.

For the olive oil-Meyer lemon curd:
Juice and zest from 3 lemons
1 tsp gelatin powder + 2 tbsp cold water
3 egg yolks
2 tbsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp cornstarch
a pinch of salt
4 tbsp unsalted butter, cut into small cubes
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a pot, heat up the lemon juice and zest with the gelatin. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, and salt together. Once the gelatin has dissolved, pour half of the lemon juice over the egg yolks and whisk that. Then transfer all of that liquid back into the pot and whisk on medium heat until the lemon curd begins to thicken and cling to the sides of your whisk. Whisk in the olive oil and vanilla and pass it through a sieve to remove any lumps. Pour the curd into the cooled down tart shell and allow the curd to set inside of the shell in the refrigerator for at least 20 minutes.

For the Swiss meringue marshmallow:
2 egg whites
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar*
1 tbsp gelatin powder
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract

In a bowl over a double boiler, whisk together the egg whites, sugar, cream of tartar, gelatin, and salt until the egg whites are frothy and the sugar and gelatin powder are fully dissolved into the egg whites. Transfer the bowl from the double boiler into a stand mixer bowl. Add to the mixture your vanilla extract and whip everything together with a whisk attachment until stiff peaks form and the meringue-marshmallow batter is tripled in volume. Spread the marshmallow over the top of the tart, keeping it within an inch from the edges.

For the tuiles:
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup granulated sugar
4 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
2 egg whites
a pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
beet powder(1 tsp for red, 1/2 tsp for orange)
turmeric(1/2 tsp for yellow, 1/4 tsp for orange)
green spirulina powder(1 tsp for green)
blue spirulina powder(1 tsp for blue, 1 tsp for indigo)
purple yam powder(1 tbsp for purple, 1/2 tsp for indigo)

In a bowl, mix the flour, sugar, buter, egg whites, salt, and vanilla together. Divide the batter into 7 portions and dye them accordingly to form the 7 different colors. Spread the batter onto tuile molds and bake at 285 degrees F for 14 minutes. Allow the tuiles to cool before unmolding them. Garnish the top of the tart with the tuiles to finish.