Lemon Meringue Pie

Lemon Meringue Pie is a classic dessert, combining many delicious ingredients including lemon curd (yum!), pastry and meringue. What makes this dessert awesome is that all three components blend together perfectly and create a heavenly explosion in your mouth when you eat the pie.This recipe came from “Mary Berry’s Complete Cookbook”.

Lemon Meringue Pie

Ingredients

• Lemon curd (check out my recipe – it is just the right quantity for this size of pie)

• 250 g plain flour

• 30 g icing sugar

• 125 g chilled butter (cubed)

• 1 egg yolk

• 2 tbsp cold water

• 5 egg whites

• 250 g caster sugar

Method

Although this is a really tasty dessert, it is quite time consuming to make. Each component must be made in a certain order.

First make the pasty. If you have a food processor like me, then put in the icing sugar, plain flour and butter and combine until a breadcrumb consistency forms. If you do not have a food processor then you will have to rub the butter and dry ingredients together with you fingers. Next, add in the egg yolk and then enough of the water to make a soft, workable dough. Wrap the dough in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes. At this point make the curd and set it aside to cool.

Once the dough has firmed up, take it out of the fridge and roll it out. Transfer the pastry to the pie dish (about 25cm in diameter). Press the pastry into all the grooves gently and cut and pastry overlapping the edges. Do not forget to prick the bottom of the pastry with a fork (I forgot to do this and the shell puffed up).

Blind bake the pastry in a preheated oven at 200 (180 fan) degrees celcius for 10 minutes. (To blind bake, place a sheet of parchment paper on top of the pastry and weigh it down with ceramic beans or use rice if you do not have these).

Take out of the oven and remove the ceramic beans and put back in the oven for 5 minutes, or until the base has dried out (do you see the puffy base because I didn’t prick it with a fork?!)

Decrease the temperature of the oven to 150 degrees celcius. It is now time to make the meringues. Whisk the 5 egg whites until stiff peaks form.

With the mixer on a medium high speed, add in the caster sugar one tablespoon at a time. The mixture should become thick and glossy and have stiff peaks. To check if all the sugar has dissolved, rub a bit of the mixture between your thumb and index finger – if the mixture feels grainy then continue whisking until completely smooth.

Now it is time to assemble all the ingredients. Pour the lemon curd on top of the pastry and then follow with the meringue.

I decided to smooth out the meringue on top and then with the back of a spoon create little peaks all around.

Transfer the pie to the oven and bake for 45 minutes or until crisp and brown. Serve the pie warm or cold with a dollop of whipped cream or Greek yogurt.