I am not really getting the hang of food blogging so far. I am loving sharing recipes but to be honest I am still struggling to share a lot from my life as maybe it is boring to everyone else? I am really trying to overcome this issue so I will be making efforts to share a little more, at least about my life in connection with food. Feel free to tell me to shut up with my waffling on my personal www.instagram.com/mioneexplores/ page where I share pictures of my food as I cook it at home. I am afraid sometimes the recipes don’t go up on the blog at the same time as the insta pictures – this is mainly because I tend to batch cook and try to fill every shelf of my oven with things that I can then eat throughout the week, or freeze.
You will find that a lot of my recipes are really cheap to make (this is because I am on a budget). Most things can be frozen and served lots of different ways which is obviously a plus – I get really bored with food easily like a child so I need plenty of exciting “trimmings” to keep me interested in the same meal more than once!
Spare Egg Whites? Lemon Meringue Pie is a No Brainer!
As I just made lemon curd I have five egg whites sitting in my fridge so I am basically obliged to make a lemon meringue pie. Lemon meringue pie is a dessert that really brings back my childhood memories. My grandma (on my mum’s side) often made a lemon meringue pie for us on a Sunday – we pretty much ALWAYS ate with my grandparents on a Sunday – when we were small we always ate there on Fridays too – I loved my maternal grandparents like second parents and loved getting to spend so much time with them. I am so grateful now that they aren’t with us that I spent such a lot of quality time with them while I could.
My grandma’s lemon meringue pie was pretty unbeatable. I remember she used to pop it on top of the microwave (out of the way of all her busying around the kitchen) while it cooled. As it cooled, little globules of amber coloured sugar would gather around the top of the meringue. My sister and I would sneak them from off the top of the meringue! Then, one day, my grandma watched Delia Smith’s show and learned how to do the meringue without globules. It was a sad day as we loved those little sugary treats! I don’t know what she did differently and I don’t care as I was keeping my fingers crossed for those little jewels of amber that appear – and I was really glad to see that they did appear on mine too! Here’s how I did it
Ingredients
Pie crust
220g plain flour
50g icing sugar
150g butter
1 egg
Meringue
5 egg whites
100g caster sugar
Lemon Curd
Lemon curd (recipe here)
Method
Rub the flour and butter together
Add the icing sugar and egg
Knead into a dough
Add a drop of milk if too dry
Wrap in cling film and rest for an hour
Roll out and line your pie tin (I buttered mine but probably didn’t need to)
Blind bake for 10 minutes with baking beans (I actually use dried rice, works fine)
Remove beans and bake for a further ten minutes
Cool and pour in lemon curd
Whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks
Add sugar a tablespoon at a time, continuing to whisk
Top the pie and bake at 160 (or 180 of your oven isn’t bonkers like mine) until the meringue is browned.
