GBBO Season 13 – Week 5 Technical: Lemon Meringue Pie

I first had to make the pastry. Pastry is the base of the pie. Required to hold each bit of pie and an opportunity to add a rich buttery flavor to the dish. The pastry for this lemon meringue pie is very similar to pastries that I have made in the past.

To start, I whisked the flour and the salt together. Then I added in the butter. I Started mixing everything together with a spoon but then I switched to my hands. I feel like I can rub the butter into the flour easier when using my fingertips.

The mixture should have a crumb-like or sand like texture once all the butter is rubbed into the flour. Then I added some sugar and egg. Again, I started to mix everything together with a spoon before switching to my hand. It wasn’t the crumbliest of dough, but it was not robust either.

Once I got the dough to a good working texture, I used a rolling pin to push the dough out into a disc that would cover my entire pie tin. I tried to push the dough into all of the corners of the pie tins before lining the tin with parchment, and then filling the pie with weights.

Pennies are great weights because they are easily available. I know that pie weights exist, but I have pennies so that works fine. I baked the pie crust which means it is ready for the filling!

The filling is where I ran into a little trouble. If I had followed the recipe perfectly, it would have turned out well, but I am not familiar with the viscosity of set lemon custard. But I’ll talk more about that later.

 To start making the filling, I combined the lemon juice and zest of six lemons. There was a lot to work with here. The big concern was making sure that the lemon juice was strained so now seeds or pulp ended up in the lemon meringue pie!

Then I threw the orange juice and some water into a pot on the stove. I brought it to a boil and then added my lemon mixture. Let it all simmer and thicken. And here is the first potential spot of failure. I am not sure what the recipe defined as “thickened” so I eyeballed it the best I could. But I’m not confident I did the right amount.

In a large bowl, I whisked together egg yolks and sugar. I wanted to make the mixture light and fluffy. I am always surprised by how much yolks can fluff up. They don’t get as fluffy as egg whites, but they can do a very close.

Then I added the lemon mixture into the bowl with the egg yolks. I continued to whisk while doing this to prevent the eggs from flash cooking which would make scrambled egg custard. No good. It is something I have done before, and I want to avoid doing it ever again.

I put the whole mixture back into the pot and over a flame. This is thickening instance number two. And again, I do not know if I thickened the filling enough. I do think this is where I went wrong and did not keep the mixture on the flame long enough. Not thick enough means the mixture won’t set. I poured the filling into the pie tin and let chill to set.

The last step of this process is making the meringue. I believe this to be the easiest part of this recipe. In a large bowl, I combined egg white and cream of tartar and whisked like nothing else. I wanted the mixture to reach soft peaks but no further. I still needed to whisk in sugar.

So, one tablespoon at a time, I added in the sugar. I do this slowly because I want the sugar to be incorporated well into the meringue. Adding too much at once can cause clumps. This feels like a major mixing moment. I typically try to mix until I can’t really feel the graininess of the meringue.

Then I scooped all of that delicious mixture on top of the set pie. I used the back of the spoon to make the meringue into a design. And then it was into the oven! I wanted to get the meringue a little crispy with a golden color on the tips.