Desserts

Lemon meringue pie

A short crust pastry filled with the perfect combination of sour lemon filling and sweet meringue topping.

Ingredients

Makes one pie for six people:

Recipe

Start by making a short crust pastry for the base of the pie.

In a large bowl, mix:

Mix the flour and butter together with your fingertips, breaking down the diced butter until it the butter chunks are roughly pea-sized.

Add to the bowl:

Keep mixing by hand until it forms a smooth, hard dough.

Flour a hard surface, and flatten the dough until it makes a disk larger than your pie dish. Use the pastry to line the bottom of the pie dish.

Place a sheet of aluminium foil inside the pastry, and cover with baking beans. Bake at 180℃ (gas mark 4) for 15 minutes. Remove the foil and baking beans, and base at 180℃ for another 5 minutes. Remove the crust from the oven and leave to cool on the side.

For the lemon filling, in a small bowl, mix together:

In another bowl, mix together:

In a sauce pan, bring to the boil 275 millilitres of water.

Once boiling, add to the boiling water the corn flour and lemon juice mix. Stir slowly over medium heat until the mixture thickens.

Once the mixture thickened, take off the heat and mix in the eggs and sugar mix. Bring back to the medium heat, and slowly stir until the mixture thickens again.

Once thickened again, take off the heat and leave to cool down for a couple of minutes, while stirring, until it stops steaming. Pour the lemon filling in the pastry crust, making sure it does not overflow. Set aside to cool down while making the meringue.

For the meringue, beat together:

Beat the egg whites and sugar until soft to hard peaks.

Transfer the beaten eggs to a piping bag, and pipe the meringue on top of the lemon filling to top up the pie.

Bake the pie at 170℃ (gas mark 3) for 15 minutes, or until the meringue is golden.

Leave to cool down to room temperature before serving.

For decorating, top the pie with a couple of slices of candied lemons.