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Prepared by: Arina Volskaya
10.10.2016 Cooking time: 4 hours 0 minutes
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A very tasty and tender pie, which perfectly combines crumbly dough and sweet and sour lemon cream. And even meringue on top. What could be tastier with a cup of aromatic tea or coffee?
Sand basket
1. In order to prepare the lemon meringue, we will first start kneading the chopped shortcrust pastry from which the base of this pie will be made. To do this, sift the flour and salt into a bowl.
2. Cold butter should be cut into small cubes or grated on a coarse grater directly into a bowl of flour. Beforehand, the butter can be kept in the freezer for 15–20 minutes so that it does not immediately begin to melt when kneading the dough.
3. Rub the butter and flour with your hands as quickly as possible until you get coarse sand crumbs. You can also chop the butter and flour with two knives on a table or cutting board, although in my opinion, everything is much faster, easier and cleaner by hand.
4. Immediately add 5 tbsp to the shortbread dough. l. water, previously kept in the refrigerator, and knead the dough with your hands until it begins to form a lump. If you see that the dough is crumbling and cannot form a ball normally, you need to gradually add more water, half a tablespoon at a time. The finished dough should be wrapped in cling film and left in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Important! You need to knead the chopped dough very quickly and under no circumstances try to make it smooth. There should be noticeable pieces of cold butter in it, which will boil during baking in the oven and break the structure of the dough, making it light and slightly flaky.
5. Roll out the chilled dough on a floured surface and place it in the mold, making small sides about 2 cm high. There is no need to grease the mold, since the dough with so much oil will not be able to stick to it. Then the dough must be pricked often with a fork so that steam can escape freely and it does not swell in the oven.
Advice! For this pie, it is very convenient to use a round springform baking dish with a diameter of 24 - 26 cm, from which the meringue can be easily removed and served on a beautiful dish. In addition, a pie prepared in a tart pan with grooved sides looks very appetizing, but it will be almost impossible to remove the finished pie from it, so you will most likely have to cut and serve it in this particular form.
6. Cover the dough in the form with baking paper and fill it to the top with some kind of weight, for example, dried beans.
7. Bake in an oven preheated to 200°C for 15 minutes, after which remove the weight and dry the sand basket at the same temperature for another 10 minutes.
Advice! “Spent” beans should not be thrown into the trash, since they can be put in a bag or jar and used for similar purposes as much as you want.
Description of preparation:
A very tender, aromatic and incredibly tasty pie.
Not only will your family be happy with it; such a pie deserves to take a place on the holiday table. True, you will have to tinker a little, but the result is worth it! This recipe details and shows how to make lemon meringue pie. I hope that everything will be clear to you and that everything will work out for you as well as possible. Tip: it is better to cook the pie in a mold with split sides. Purpose: For an afternoon snack / For a holiday table Main ingredient: Dairy products / Flour / Butter / Sour cream / Eggs / Cream Dish: Baking / Pies Geography of cuisine: European
Lemon cream
8. Now you need to start preparing the lemon cream. To do this, 350 ml of milk with sugar must be heated almost to a boil and, stirring vigorously, until the sugar is completely dissolved.
Advice! It is advisable to heat the milk in a ladle with a spout, so that later it is convenient to pour it into the yolk cream in a thin stream. If you don’t have such utensils, you can then pour the milk into a measuring jug. However, it is best to use glass containers for this, since high temperatures can simply crack plastic.
9. The eggs need to be divided into whites and yolks, put the whites in the refrigerator for a while, and put the yolks in a saucepan and beat with a mixer until a fluffy white mass is obtained. After this, you need to add 50 ml of milk to them and beat again.
10. Add starch in two additions and mix with a mixer until smooth.
Advice! You can use either corn starch or potato starch to make lemon curd. You should start mixing in the starch at the lowest speed of the mixer, otherwise you risk powdering yourself and all nearby kitchen utensils with it. After a little while, you can gradually increase the mixer speed to achieve a smooth and uniform cream consistency.
11. Pour hot milk into the yolk mixture in a thin stream and in small portions, stirring everything vigorously with a mixer or a regular whisk.
12. Then this mixture must be placed on the stove over a fire slightly below medium and, with continuous stirring, wait until it begins to thicken sharply. After this, you need to continue cooking it for a couple more minutes on the lowest heat, and then remove it from the stove.
Advice! Custard is a rather finicky thing that can easily burn, curdle or form lumps. Therefore, if you do not have much experience in preparing this type of cream, then it is better to cook it not over an open fire, but in a water bath. If, nevertheless, your cream ends up with an uneven consistency, then this situation can be corrected by rubbing it through a fine sieve.
13. Squeeze the juice out of the lemons, filter it through cheesecloth or a sieve, and then measure out 125 ml. First, remove all the lemon zest from one of the fruits using a special grater.
14. Add butter, lemon juice and zest to the hot custard.
15. Mix everything thoroughly and return the pan with the cream to the stove over low heat for another 2 minutes, remembering to continuously stir it with a whisk. The finished lemon cream should be placed in the refrigerator or even the freezer so that it cools while the protein meringue is prepared.
Baking process
After shaping, the cake with lemon cream and meringue is immediately sent to the oven, which is preheated to 180 degrees. In this mode, a tasty and beautiful product is baked for 10-16 minutes, until the surface of the dessert turns golden brown.
After time, the delicious homemade delicacy is taken out and cooled completely. If all the requirements of the recipe are met, the cake with lemon curd and meringue should not settle; it is important to maintain its given shape.
Protein meringue
16. To prepare the main component of this magnificent dessert, place the egg whites and sugar in a mixing bowl and place it in a water bath. To do this, take a saucepan of a suitable size and insert a bowl into it so that it does not touch the bottom. Pour some hot water into the bottom of the pan and place it over medium heat so that the water boils and the steam from it heats the bowl of whites.
17. Stir the protein mixture with a whisk or fork until all the sugar has dissolved (at this point it will stop squeaking and the mixture will become lighter and smoother).
18. Beat the whites with sugar in a water bath at high mixer speed for 4 - 5 minutes until a fluffy and stable snow-white mass is obtained.
19. Then you need to immediately move the bowl with the whites to another container filled with cold water and ice to stop the brewing of the whites as quickly as possible, and continue to beat for another 2 - 3 minutes until the protein mass cools.
Ingredients:
- Wheat flour - 300 grams (250 - for the dough, 2 tablespoons - for the filling)
- Butter - 280 grams (250 for dough, 30 for filling)
- Egg - 5 pieces (1 - for the dough, 4 yolks - for the filling, 4 whites - for the meringue)
- Cream - 200 Milliliters (not less than 20%)
- Sugar - 1 and 2/3 cups (1/3 cup for dough, 1/3 for filling, 1 cup for meringue)
- Lemon – 2 pieces
- Vanilla sugar - 1 teaspoon
- Salt - 1 pinch
- Sour cream - 1 tbsp. spoon
Number of servings: 8
How to make lemon meringue
20. Now you can start assembling this beautiful, delicious and fragrant French pie. To do this, spread the slightly cooled lemon cream in an even layer onto the sand base.
21. You need to lay the whipped egg whites on top, which can be done in two different ways. In the simplest version, you can place the whites on the pie as a single mass and use a spoon to make appetizing waves on the surface of the protein layer. For a slightly more interesting decoration, I recommend pipetting lots of swirls onto the surface of the lemon curd using a piping bag fitted with a large star tip.
Comment! As can be seen from the photographs, I used the second option for decorating the meringue, and although, in my opinion, it is more beautiful and original than the first, nevertheless, I managed to fit only half of the prepared protein cream in this way. But the rest of the incredibly tasty whipped egg whites were immediately eaten by the household, impatiently waiting for the main meringue to be ready.
