Lemon meringue pie

Fatima Sydow

Ingredients

• For the crust

• 12 digestive biscuits crushed into crumbs

• 75 grams of melted butter

• For the lemon filling

• The zest and juice of 2 large lemons

• 2 heaped tablespoons of cornflour

• 3 egg yolks ( ensure you are using extra large eggs at room temperature

• ¾ cup of sugar

• Meringue topping

• 3 egg whites

• 1 cup of caster sugar

Method

Crust – mix the fine crumbs of biscuits with the melted butter with a spoon.

Take this biscuit mix and press mixture onto bottom and up the side of a flan/ pie dish with the back of a metal spoon. Put one side.

Lemon filling – Put the lemon juice and zest in a bowl with the cornflour and stir, to this you add 300ml of hot water and stir well, now take this lemon mixture and pour in a saucepan and on a medium heat stir with a whisk until it thickens, remove from the heat and pour into a cold bowl allowing it to cool a bit, this will take about 6-8 minutes.

Now whisk in your egg yolks and sugar to the semi-cooled lemon mixture and stir, transfer this mixture back into your saucepan and bring up the heat, stirring with the whisk until it has thickened, put one side and allow to cool.

For the meringue, in a large bowl, with electric mixer on full speed, beat egg whites until you see soft peaks form.

At this stage add the caster sugar one tablespoon at a time, beating well after each addition. Sugar must be dissolved completely.

Eggs must have stiff glossy peaks, this process will take about 10 minutes.

Fill the pie dish with biscuit base with the lemon filling, pipe or spread over the meringue topping and bake in a preheated oven at 180°C for 30 minutes.

Serve hot or cold.

*Pro tip – add some of the lemon zest to your biscuit crumb mixture.

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