Serves 8
Prep, cook, assemble in 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Tolstoy once said, “What is stronger than death and fate? Anke pie.”
Anke Pie was a family recipe for a lemon tart so tasty it kept Tolstoy in moral crisis for nearly 30 years.
Tolstoy was one of the greatest writers who ever lived. War and Peace and Anna Karenina reshaped literature. His essays on peace and nonviolence later inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.
The recipe came from a family friend of his mother-in-law, Dr. Anke. When Sofia married Leo in 1862, she brought it into the household like a dowry.
On paper, it seemed harmless — a lemon custard tart in a shortbread crust. But over time, it became a kind of delicious nemesis. An irresistible symbol of the world he was trying so hard to leave behind.
When Sofia laid the table just so, or insisted on fresh linens for guests, Tolstoy would watch barefoot from the garden.
He knew what was coming.
Anke Pie.
And the internal struggle would begin again.
Would he refuse a slice? Even just a little slice? You decide.
INGREDIENTS
Short Bread
100g butter, softened
1 t vanilla essence
2 egg yolks
200g white flour
50g white sugar
Pinch of salt
Lemon juice to bind
CURD
2 egg yolks
100g butter
100g sugar
Zest and juice 2 lemons
Pinch of salt.
METHOD
First make the curd.
Whisk all ingredients together in a heat proof bowl on the stove top over a bowl of simmering water. It’ll take 20 minutes so, settle in and enjoy! Refrigerate so that it thickens and won’t ooze everywhere when you assemble the cake.
Heat oven to 160C
Beat butter, vanilla essence and egg yolks till just combined. Lightly mix in the dry ingredients until it forms a light crumb. Add enough lemon juice so that when you squeeze the crumbs together in your fingers that it sticks together.
Liberally grease 2 Lil’ Legacy Pans and 1 Jnr.
Divide the crumbs between the 2 Lil’ pans reserving 3 T for the Jnr.
Push the shortbread into the pans with your fingers making sure it’s evenly spread. Leave the crumbs as crumbs in the Jnr.
Bake for 15 minutes until golden brown. Carefully turn out onto a wire rack to cool. And set aside the crumbs to cool.
Smear 4 T of the cold thickened curd on a serving plate. Nestle one of the shortbread circles on top of the curd and cover it with half the remaining curd then repeat the process with shortbread then curd. Cover the sides of the shortcake stack in curd and decorate with the shortbread crumbs and lemon slices.
Refrigerate for 2 hours and serve.
