Lemon Meringue Pie

I had some shortcrust pastry left over from my quiche today and couldn’t decide what to do with it. I knew I wanted to do a sweet, so had to consider what I had in the house! I had chocolate, but no cream, and only two eggs left over which meant that my options were somewhat limited, but I soon settled on Lemon Meringue pie! These are extremely simple to do, the quantities can easily be adjusted depending on the number of guests to dinner, and are surprisingly cheap!

Individual Lemon Meringue Pie

Ingredients:

150g Shortcrust Pastry

For the lemon curd:

1 egg

The zest and juice of one lemon

115g caster sugar

25g butter

For the meringue:

50g caster sugar

1 egg white

Method:

Roll the pastry out until half a centimetre thick, and line muffin tins. Blind bake in the oven for 8-10mins at gas mark 6 (leave the oven on while doing the next stage to ensure it is pre-heated).

The lemon curd can easily be done in the microwave. Put all of the ingredients in a microwavable bowl (but do strain the egg first!), and zap for 1min.

Give it all a good stir to ensure there are no lumps and zap again for a further 1min. Keep doing this until you feel the mixture thicken (note: we are not expecting it to get really thick at this stage, this will happen when it cools!)

Allow the mix to cook while whipping up the meringue – first using an electric whisk, whisk your egg white until it forms stiff peaks (in other words you can hold it over your head!) Then slowly add the caster sugar (I recommend on tbsp at a time!) Once it has gone thick and glossy it is ready!

Pour the cooled curd into the pastry cases. Then top with the meringue. Bake in the oven at gas mark 6 for 10mins (or until the meringue begins to go golden.)

These can be served hot straight out of the oven, or be left to cool!

Enjoy!

Pricing (based on Asda's own unless otherwise specified)

Pastry 30p, Eggs 16p, Lemon 14p, Caster Sugar 28p, Butter 5p

Total (makes 4) = 93p

Per portion = 24p