Lemon and Meringue Cake. Lemon pie

How to make a Lemon Pie .

This is a classic dessert of British and North American cuisine , once the recipe was brought there by English emigrants.

We will also find it as a “ lemon meringue pie ” (lemon tart and meringue) , since it combines a lemon cream with a good layer of meringue.

This combination is balanced, and the fresh and slightly acidic flavor of the lemon compensates for the sweetness and forcefulness of the meringue.

What we do have to recognize is that it is a dessert specially indicated for lovers of lemon flavor. In any case, we can adapt this flavor to all tastes, reducing the amount of lemon juice and adding water.

First the base is made with Quebrada dough or Brisa dough , then we will add the lemon cream and after a few hours in the cold, it will be the turn of applying the Italian meringue .

But hey, do not despair before making it, because I assure you that it is very worth the work of making it and the wait to taste it.

We prepare the shortcrust pastry

1. On the blog you will find the recipe to make the shortcrust pastry without complications.
2. Another option to shorten the preparation time is to buy a ready-made dough, which will be enough to bake it for the necessary time.
3. We preheat the oven for 15 minutes at 180º C.
4. We place the dough on a baking paper and pass it to the metal mold, adjusting it.
5. We cut if it stands out, and we prick the base of the dough with a fork, so that it does not swell once in the oven.
6. We place in the central tray and bake 15-20 minutes at 180º C, until we see that it is toasted / golden.
7. Later, it will finish with the rest of the ingredients. We remove and let it cool completely, outside the mold.

How to make Lemon Pie lemon base cream

1. Grate a lemon and reserve the zest. We squeeze 4-5 lemons, to get about 200 ml. of juice.
2. Help yourself with a strainer so that the nuggets don’t fall. We add 50 ml. water to juice, mix well and reserve.
3. We separate 4 eggs, the yolks from the whites, and we reserve these in the fridge to make the meringue later.
4. In a bowl, beat 2 eggs and 4 yolks until they blanch.
5. Add the sugar little by little and mix well with some rods.
6. Now we add the cornmeal and continue mixing, until it is a very homogeneous cream.
7. In a casserole that does not stick, add the juice, the butter in pieces and the lemon zest. Heat over medium heat and let the butter melt.
8. We lower the heat, add the egg mixture and stir continuously. Little by little you will see how it thickens and a smooth lemon-colored cream is formed.
9. With the base of dough already cold, we put it back in the mold. We pour the lemon cream, distributing it evenly, and smooth the surface with the help of a spatula.
10. Now we need to put it in cold so that it takes texture and consistency.
11. Let it warm, cover with a transparent film and reserve in the fridge for about 2 hours.

Italian meringue

1. Once the cold weather is over, it’s time to make the top layer of the cake.
2. As we have to assemble egg whites, it is recommended that we use a kitchen robot or a mixer with rods, if you are not going to leave your arm in the attempt.
3. The peculiarity of this type of meringue is that we make it with syrup, which we prepare in the proportion: double the amount of sugar than water.
4. In a large bowl, add the reserved whites and mount them together with 1 pinch of salt.
5. When they are almost assembled, gradually add 50 gr. sugar and continue beating. When they are practically ready, we stop and reserve while we make the syrup.
6. In a saucepan, put the water to heat over medium heat, add the sugar and stir until it dissolves.
7. We raise the fire and bring to a boil, without stirring. We will take care that it does not crystallize at the edges of the liquid, in the part of the surface.
8. And how do we know where it is in the desired texture? Well one of the ways is to use the round end of the handle of our rods.
9. We take a little syrup, we blow and if they make bubbles, that is the ideal point.
10. Another way is to put a little syrup in water, and check that a ball forms. For those of you with a kitchen thermometer, the point we want is when it reaches 120ºC.
11. Ready the syrup, we are adding (hot) to the meringue little by little, with a fine thread, at the same time that we continue beating.
12. Once finished, we continue until it cools down. It will result in a bright and well-consistent texture.

Assembling the lemon tart. Final presentation

1. We pass the meringue to a pastry bag and with a curly nozzle.
2. We are making small piles of meringue around the contour, from the outside in. With a little skill, we make them pointy.
3. The finishing touch will be again in the oven. We place the cake on the central tray.
4. Bake with the heat function “up and down”, about 10 minutes at 180º C, until the meringue begins to roast.
5. It is important that you do not lose sight of it, so that it does not burn too much, and our cake is not very presentable.
6. We want it to cook, not singe, so it is better to bake than burn it with a blowtorch.
7. We remove from the oven and let it warm, so that the meringue sits in the cream again.

You can consume it warm or cold, as you like. It is a delicious cake, which combines the characteristic flavor of lemon and the creaminess of Italian meringue, with it you will always be like kings / queens at home.

You can see all the step by step photos of the Lemon Pie recipe   in this album, do not miss any detail and it will be perfect.

Curiosities about the Lemon Pie

• If we focus on its name, we can take it apart and find out what kind of dessert we are going to prepare. The “Pie” refers to the salty dough that will serve as the base for the cake, and which we will later fill with the main ingredients, whether sweet or salty.
• The “Lemon” refers to the sweet lemon cream (very similar to the lemon curd ), with a more or less intense flavor, and the ” Meringue ” refers to the abundant top layer of meringue.
• As for meringue, we have used the “ Italian meringue ”, brighter and more consistent than French or Swiss. It is made by adding hot syrup instead of just sugar, which makes it stay consistent and firm for several days.
• The most reliable origins of the ” Lemon pie ” date back to the court of the Queen of England Elizabeth, in the 16th century, although it was made without adding meringue.
• The recipe was evolving and a century later, the top layer of meringue was added, coming from the French and Italian confectioners. To prepare this cake we will need several steps and several hours in total.