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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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

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

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

Ready to serve

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

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