Son's Favourite Lemon Meringue Pie

Another dessert that falls into the very niche category, coz if you don't like the sour taste of life, then this certainly is NOT the dessert for you. Also, for reasons I can't fathom, the calorific content in this seemingly "healthy" dessert, is shocking. I think it's about 500 kcal per slice, according to the Australian Women's Weekly Cookbook.

There are so many recipes to choose from, eventually, I've just settled on a composite of several different recipes, for the pastry, as well as the filling and meringue.

Pastry :

125gm butter
2 tablespoons castor sugar
2 cups flour
cold ice water, about 2-3 tablespoons

1. Blitz the above (without the water) in a food processor. If don't have food processor, then tough luck, you gotta rub the butter into the flour and sugar, until it resembles breadcrumbs. Keep your fingers cool, (I don't know how, maybe intermittently put them in the freezer), and when it resembles breadcrumbs, (both manually or food processor), add the ice water, little by little until if forms a nice cohesive dough that looks like it can be easily rolled.

2. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, prepare the filling and also preheat oven to 180C

Filling:

Group 1
1/2 cup corn flour
1 cup water
3/4 cup lemon juice
1/2 cup - 3/4 cup castor sugar (depending on your sourness tolerance)

Group 2
grated rind of two lemons
60 gms butter
3 yolks

4. Mix the group 1 ingredients in a saucepan, or pot, over moderately high heat, until the mixture become thick and glossy. It should look like yellowy transparent play dough.... well, maybe not THAT thick....yellowy transparent err.... jelly like.... oh well, you'll learn through trial and error.

5. Lower the heat, and leave it on while stirring vigorously, for another minute.

6. Remove from heat, and add in the group 2 ingredients, and stir until all combined. You should get a lovely yellow lemony curd, the texture of thick custard. Lovely to eat on its own. Leave aside to cool.

7. Meanwhile, blind bake the pastry shell, in a flan or pie tin.

8. When tart shell is ready, put in the lemon curd filling, and whack on the meringue on top, and bake for another 10 minutes, until meringue is nice and brown.

Meringue:
4-5 egg whites, absolutely unpolluted
pinch of cream of tartar
1/2 cup castor sugar

Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, gradually add tartar and sugar. The way to test if your egg white is sufficiently beaten is, if you invert the bowl, the mixture doesn't spill. Of course, don't invert too long, just quickly to test if the egg whites stay in the bowl, defying gravity.

I think this is good enough to be served without any embellishments.