4: Lemon Meringue Pie by the Hairy Bikers

Yes - I have actually now made lemon meringue pie, all by myself, with a little assistance from Mum in using the electric whisk instead of the manual one for making the meringue and stirring the lemon filling while I picked up the laptop from upstairs so Mum, Dad and Tid could Skype Lintu. It was very difficult to do and I got very frustrated with it when the pastry started shrinking in the oven down from the top of the pan. I only had time to have a chicken sandwich between blind baking and making the meringue, although the lemon filling went remarkably quickly and I was really pleased with how it turned out.

Lemon Filling Ingredients:
50g corn flour
350ml cold water
200g caster sugar
4 lemons, zest and juice (around 225ml)
1 free-range egg plus 3 free-range egg yolks

Meringue Ingredients:
3 free-range egg whites
175g caster sugar
Half teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees. Grease a 20cm fluted flan tin - or, the crimped edge glass pan that we’ve got in our glassware cupboard. I used premade shortcrust pastry and rolled it out on a floured surface, turning it and flouring it regularly until I’d rolled it out enough to fill the bottom of the glass pan and up to the top of the edge. I trimmed off the excess with a sharp cooking knife and used the pieces to fill in any gaps that happened. Prick the base all over with a fork and chill the whole thing in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Put the corn flour in a small bowl and mix with enough of the cold water to make a thin paste and set aside. Put the remaining water into a large saucepan and add the sugar, lemon zest and juice - about 225ml worth of juice, you can top up with bottled lemon juice if you don’t get enough from your lemons. Heat gently until the sugar dissolves then bring to the boil. Reduce the heat slightly and quickly stir in the corn flour mixture, which causes immediate glossy thickening. Cook over a low heat for three minutes, stirring until thickly glossy and then remove from the heat and cool for five minutes. Whisk the egg yolks with the whole egg until smooth and then whisk vigorously into the lemon filling. Set aside to cool for 25 minutes.

Put the pastry case on a sturdy baking tray, line with crumpled baking parchment and fill with baking beans; you don’t need to do this if you’ve pricked the bottom of the pie case. Bake blind for 15 minutes then carefully take out of the oven to remove baking beans if you need to take them out, and then put back in the oven for 3-4 minutes until the surface of the pastry is dry. Don’t be alarmed if the pastry puffs a bit, apparently that’s not a problem. Remove from the oven and reduce the temperature to 150 degrees.

For the meringue topping, whisk with an electric mixer in a large bowl until stiff then gradually whisk in half the sugar, very slowly, a spoon at a time. Add the vanilla extract and whisk in the remaining sugar. Stir the cooled lemon filling and pour into the pastry case. Cover very gently with large dessert-spoonfuls of the meringue topping, starting at the sides then working your way into the middle, and gently swirl the top. Bake for 25 minutes or until the meringue is set and very lightly browned. Leave to cool before removing from the tin - or alternatively, serve in the pan like we did and just cut it out from there. It was enormously delicious.