Saturday 9 July 2011

When Life Gives You Lemons…

Make lemon meringue pie!

Even though my own poor little lemon tree has been attacked by a wasp blight and hasn’t grown much in the two years since I planted it, it seems all my friends and neighbours have lemons in abundance, and my fruit bowl has turned into a lemon bowl!

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What else could I do?

Start with making a shortcrust pastry (I’m generally pretty random with pastries – just chuck some flour and stuff in a bowl, knead it up and roll it out), press it into a pie dish and pre-bake the base.

Juice and zest two large lemons.

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Then whisk together 1 cup sugar, 2 tbsp flour, 3 tbsp cornstarch, a pinch of salt and 1 1/2 cups water. Whisk in the lemon juice and zest and cook over a medium heat till just boiling. Then add in 2 tbsp butter.

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While the butter is melting, beat 4 egg yolks and slowly add in a scoop of the hot mixture, then pour the whole lot back into the pot, and keep whisking over a low heat until it’s thick.

Pour the filling into the pie crust.

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Now the fun part: we make meringue! Start by beating the 4 egg whites in a bowl. Best to use an antique SwiftWhip for this!

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Once the egg-whites start looking frothy, slowly add in a few tablespoons of sugar – keep whipping!

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At some point your arm starts getting tired, but you probably have to whip some more

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Keep whipping till the eggwhite mixture has about 5 Tbsp sugar, and is forming stiff peaks, like this:

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Then you can splop the mixture onto the lemon filling in the pie crust and put it in a (pre-heated) oven.

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Bake at 175C (350F) for about 10 minutes, decide it needs to be turned and left another 2 minutes… and then: voila!

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Ready to serve

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Best enjoyed with friends, and a little of my organic home-made strawberry liqueur.

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Yum! Now I just have to work out a gluten-free variation so I can make this for Ariad.

9 comments:

  1. Mmmmm, lemon pie (hold the meringue please, top with whipped cream instead!) Good luck on the gluten free version!

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  2. duly noted: whipped cream for rainblissed!

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  3. Can we have your recipe for strawberry liqueur please!

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  4. recipe for strawberry liqueur is the same as for goji liqueur, but substitute dried goji berries for dried strawberries.
    http://majikfaerie.blogspot.com/2010/11/goji-goodness.html
    I got a massive box of organic strawberries for a local farm in return for making a chocolate cake one time, and dehydrated all the strawberries to make the liqueur.

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  5. right up there with your pumpkin pie, Jen!

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  6. I made pir crust normally but with rice flour and it turned out alright same thing with yeast pizza crust. I like this website for gluten free stuff if you can eat nuts.http://www.elanaspantry.com/

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Thanks for your lovely words, witty banter and entertaining discussion :)