Mother's Day Lemon Meringue Pie

Happy Mother's Day (in most parts of the world)! And spring has finally arrived in London, so decided that a suitable pudding would be fruity as chocolate is probably too heavy?!? 

Lemon Meringue Pie is a shortcrust pastry base, a layer of lemon curd and then a thick layer of meringue on top of that. It has a lot of stages but if you ignore the vast quantity of bowls you need it is relatively easy. You can buy these but they are often very very very sweet so if you make it yourself you tend to get more of a balance between sour lemon and sweet meringue.

Ingredients

For pastry: 

150g plain flour

50g caster sugar

90g butter

1 egg yolk

a little whole milk

For curd:

25g cornflour

200ml water

zest and juice of 3 lemons

100g caster sugar

2 egg yolks

40g butter

For meringue:

4 egg whites

200g caster sugar

Enough ingredients or...?

Method

1. Make the pastry: mix the flour, sugar and butter in a bowl so that it forms a crumb like consistency. Add the egg yolk and just enough milk to make the crumbs stick together in lumps. Then bring the pastry together, refrigerate for at least 1 hour.

2. Preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. 

3. Roll out the pastry and bake blind in a greased 23cm tin. Baking blind is when you cover the pastry in foil and then put baking beans (or raw pasta or rice) on to the top. This keeps the pastry in shape.

4. Cook for 15 mins. Remove the beans and then cook for 10 mins until the pastry is golden brown. Then leave to cool.

5. Meanwhile make the curd. Mix the cornflour with a third of the water in a bowl.

6. Bring the remaining water to the boil, then add lemon zest and sugar. Once dissolved, pour in cornflour solution and mix until smooth. 

7. Remove from the heat and then stir in butter, then lemon juice and finally egg yolks. If there are lumps it may be useful to strain it in a sieve but it doesn't really matter. 

8. Pour the lemon curd onto the cooled pastry and leave to chill until the curd firms up. This will stop the meringue layer from mixing with the curd. 

9. If you have turned the oven off, preheat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius. 

10. Whisk the four egg whites until they form stiff peaks. Then, at a tablespoon at a time, add the sugar, whisking after each addition until smooth and glossy. 

11. Spoon the meringue onto the lemon curd layer (if you want to be neat you can pipe the meringue but I don't think it is necessary) and bake for around 20 mins or until the meringue is golden and crispy on the top. 

12. Leave to cool and then eat. 

Christmas Countdown: Iman's Cake

On Monday it was my friend Iman's birthday, so I made her favorite cake of mine...

LEMON DRIZZLE CAKE

Ingredients:
125 g unsalted butter
175 g caster sugar
2 large eggs
zest of 1 lemon
175 g self raising flour
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons milk
For the syrup
juice of 1 ½ lemons
100 g caster sugar

23x13x7cm loaf tin lined (you can get slot in pull out ones)

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees fan/ gas mark 4
2. Cream together the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy.
3. Beat the eggs and lemon zest in to the butter and sugar.
4. Slowly fold in the flour and then add the lemon juice and milk. 
5. Once all combined, pour into the prepared loaf tin and back for 45 mins or until risen and golden. To make sure it is cooked, insert a cake tester or skewer and make sure it comes out clean.
6. The prepare the syrup, put sugar and lemon juice in to a pan. Heat until the sugar dissolves, make sure that it doesn't burn.
7. Take the cake out of the oven and stab it in order to create holes in the top of the cake.
8. Pour the syrup over the top and let is absorb it while the cake cools.
9. Remove the cake from the tin once cooled, not before or it will all fall apart due to the liquid.

insert boring photo of a loaf cake..

I promise it tastes lovely and if you want to make it prettier you can make a glaze by mixing icing sugar and lemon juice and drizzling it over the top. 

New Zealand Madelines

While I was in New Zealand over the summer holidays I found out that my relatives who live there had a Madeline tray. So it was whipped out and the opportunity was seized by all.

The mixture for madelines is very similar to that of a sponge except it has a lemon in it.

You start by whisking the sugar and eggs.

Demonstrated by my cousin Kiri

 You then add a lemon, in this case from their lemon tree in the garden.

The lemon rind has to be grated off in to the mixture, the rest of the lemon can be discarded.

Then the remaining ingredients are added and whisked to the normal cake mixture. 

You then dollop the mixture into the madeline tray and bake for about 15 minutes. 

They then come out of the tray and due to the lovely shape of the mold they look quite nice even if they are slightly burnt. 

Summer Berry Genoise

Wimbledon has just finished! And thus a light, fruity, creamy summery cake is needed.

A genoise is different to a normal sponge as it has no raising agents. The only thing that aids this is beating egg whites into stiff peaks, thus filling them with air! The yolks are also included in this sponge, whisked with sugar. And mixed with the remaining sugar and plain flour. And finally melted butter. It is then baked.

The cake is brushed with a rose water and honey syrup, after being cut open -  very badly...  

              

Finally the cake is filled with a whipped cream and fresh strawberry and raspberry icing - like thing.

I then put a few berries on the top to provide a bit of decoration and it was ready to eat! 

                                                     

So that is a delicious and summery berry which is light pudding but still lovely. 

Now all that needs to be said is....

WELL DONE MURRAY!

Next Recipe: Blueberry and Orange Muffins

Carrot Cake

Carrot cake has always confused me as a concept. Why would you put carrot in cake? It's a vegetable.

However, I have of course eaten it before, (meal deals in Boots are so very cheap) I have never made it as I just didn't think it was really my style.

Then the time came to create one as my mum wanted to take cake in to work for her team. So I thought, hey, why not?

Carrot cake surprisingly enough has carrots in it as well as walnuts, hazelnuts, raisins and lemon. This recipe had no flour and instead of butter had sunflower oil...  spooky stuff...

It then has the traditional cream cheese frosting which I decorated with walnuts.

But it looked decent and apparently her work colleagues liked it, so all was well.

Here is a photo of a slice, which my mum took as it "got a bit battered" on the way to work.

Next Recipe: Coffee and Walnut Cake

Treacle Tart

Treacle Tart is a traditional English pudding and surprisingly enough it doesn't have any actual treacle in it. 

It is a shortcrust pastry filled with a golden syrup, lemon, apple, egg and breadcrumb mixture.

There was a bit of a pastry incident... nothing a bit of first aid couldn't fix....

I had so much mixture I had to make little ones too but I have no pictures of them.

It is very sweet and perfect with cream as it takes away some of the sugary sweetness.

Next Recipe: Carrot Cake

Lemon Cupcakes

These are basically just cupcakes but with lemon extract in them... so obviously they were pretty standard. Except they were lemony.

They then have a lemon butter cream icing on them, which I have realized that I dislike... not lemon butter cream in particular but just butter cream in general. This may be down to the fact that I don't like butter.

Next Recipe: Blondies (White Chocolate Brownies)