Lemon Meringue Pie

For some reason I never used to like lemon meringue pie (I'm going to shorten it to LMP for the rest of this post because its too long to keep typing and I'm feeling kinda lazy...), I'm not sure why because meringue and lemon curd are pretty much two of my favourite things.
This being I had never made LMP before and kind of experimented with a few of the ingredients with some turning out well and others not so much.
The pastry was quite a disappointment, it wasn't sweet enough and wasn't crumbly enough and I think it let a lot of the rest of the pie down. However the curd was definitely the best I've made yet, and the meringue was pretty good too. I'm quite fussy about the kind of meringue I like, its either got to be crunchy outside and chewy on the inside or soft and mallowy like fluff, which this meringue was.

Thankfully no one saw me eating the left over meringue out of the icing bag...

Lemon Meringue Pie


Pastry (adapted from Good Food)

Ingredients
175g plain flour
100g butter, cold
1tbsp icing sugar
1tbsp water
1 egg yolk

Method
1. Preheat the oven to 180C (350F). Put the flour, butter and icing sugar into a bowl together and mix together with your finger tips till it resembles bread crumbs.
2. Add the water and egg yolk and mix till it binds together into a soft pastry. Lightly flour the work surface and roll the pastry out onto till its about 2cm thick. Line a cake tin with the pastry and chill until ready to use.
3. When ready to use blind bake the pastry case for 15 minutes until lightly golden brown.

Lemon Curd

Ingredients
5 lemons, juice and rind
2 clementines, juice and rind
200g sugar
4tbsp cornflour
4 eggs
2 egg yolks
175g butter

Method
1. Put the juice and rinds of the lemons and clementines into a pan with the cornflour and sugar and mix well.
2. Beat in the eggs and egg yolks with the juice and then add the butter.
3. Place the pan onto a medium heat and cook the curd mixture until it thickens and becomes custard like in consistency.

Meringue

Ingredients
4 egg whites
200g caster sugar
115ml water

Method
1. In a pan over medium heat put the sugar and water, letting the sugar dissolve and boil till it becomes a syrup.
2. Whilst the syrup is cooking whisk the egg whites in a clean metal bowl until soft peaks form.
3. Once the syrup is cooked switch the mixer to low speed and slowly pour the sugar syrup into the meringues being careful not to pour it onto the whisk as its hot and will burn you. Keep mixing the whites until stiff glossy peaks form and the mixture has doubled in size.

To assemble the pie:
1. Put the curd into the baked pastry case.
2. Pipe or spoon the meringue on top of the curd and either blowtorch to brown the outside of the meringue or place in a hot oven (200C) for about 5 minutes till golden brown.