Lemon Meringue Pie

This is a lovely sharp lemony custard filing pie in a short-crust pastry top with soft pillowy meringue. It took me three attempts to perfect this recipes. Now it has become my favourite. You should try it. It may took a little practise but trust me you will gonna love it. I usually make the filing one day  ahead.

Ingredients:

Short-crust pastry

1 1/2 cups    Plain flour
3       tsp.      Icing sugar
140   grams  Cold unsalted butter, diced
1                   Egg yolk
2       tbsp.    Cold water

Lemon Custard Filing

1/2    cup      Corn flour
1       cup      Castor sugar
1/2    cup      Lemon juice
1 1/4 cup      Water
1       tbsp.    Grated lemon zest
3                   Egg yolks
60     grams  Unsalted butter

Meringue

1/2 cup Castor sugar
4           Egg whites

How to do it?

In a saucepan, add in corn flour, caster sugar, lemon juice and water. Stir constantly over a medium heat until the sugar dissolve and the mixture thickens up to a glue like consistency. Take it off from heat. Add in unsalted butter, egg yolks and lemon zest, stir quickly until all combine. You should have a nice shiny yellow filling as below. Set aside allow to cool then transfer into a container, cover and put it inside the fridge to chill overnight.

To make the crust, sift the flour and icing sugar together. Rub in cold butter until the flour comes together. Add in the egg yolks and cold water, 1 tsp. at a time not too much water, until it brings everything to a smooth dough. Wrap the dough with cling wrap and let it rest for 30 minutes in the fridge.

In the meantime, preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Roll the dough out about 2 inches larger than the pie tin with a rolling pin. Roll the dough onto the rolling pin then transfer to the pie tin, trim off any excess. Prick some hole with a fork on the pastry dough then cover with a piece of baking paper and weigh it down with some uncooked rice or beans and bake in the oven for 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, take the baking paper and the weigh off then put it in the oven for another 10 minutes until the crust is golden brown and start to pull away from the pie tin. Take it out from the oven and let it cool completely.

Once the crust is cool completely, prepare the meringue by beating the egg whites until frothy then gradually add sugar and beat it until stiff peaks formed.

Pour the chilled lemon custard on top of the crust, level it with a rubber spatula. Spoon over the meringue and bake in the preheated oven at 180 degrees Celsius for 6 - 8 minutes until the meringue brown.

Enjoy.

Notes:

Never over-bake in the final steps as the filling will be watery which will makes your pie soggy.