Mini Meringue Pies

Hello,

So, you know how to make a lemon meringue pie. And it's very tasty and everything, but something's missing. Think of recent trends in baking - cupcakes, macaroons, cake pops - is there anything they have in common?

SIZE guys, size. Small is beautiful, small is cute, small is appealing. And this bias towards small things has absolutely nothing to do with me being a travel sized human. Not at all.

So I set myself the unenviable task of making tiny lemon meringue pies. And although it took ages, and was messy and stressful, they turned out beautifully:

But you already know how to make lemon meringue pie, so I'm going to give you a recipe for 24 tiny raspberry meringue pies instead. If you want to make the lemon meringue pies, just halve all the pastry and filling ingredients for the big one, but leave the meringue ingredients the same.

You will need:

For the pastry:
87g flour
44g butter or margarine meant for use in pastry (I used Stork)
1-3 tbsp water
a baking tray with 24 small holes for fairy cakes or similar

For the filling:
125g fresh raspberries
2 large egg yolks
25g cornflour

50g butter
25g caster sugar
125ml water

½ tbsp lemon juice

For the meringue:

1 tbsp cocoa
2 large egg whites
75g caster sugar
80ml water
a sugar thermometer

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
2. Add the water, a little at a time until the mixture comes together in a dough. Roll it into a ball and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
3. Roll the pastry out on a floured surface really really thin, as thin as you can get it without it breaking every time you touch it.

4. Cut out 24 circles of pastry with something that with produce circles small enough to line the holes in your baking tray. I used the mouth of a glass jar. Don't worry about making the little pie cases too deep - I actually found that the shallower ones worked better. Use a little piece of excess pastry to push the dough circles into the holes - you're far less likely to break the pastry that way than if you use your fingers.

5. Blind bake for 5-7 minutes, depending on your oven. You could cover all the pie cases in foil and weigh it down with rice or baking beans, but that would take ages, so I just pricked them all over to stop them from rising.

5. While the pie cases are baking, put the water and cornflour in a saucepan over a low heat. Whisk to remove any lumps and then add the butter and stir until melted. Increase the heat until nearly boiling then remove from heat.

6. Add the lemon juice, sugar and juice the raspberries into the pan by forcing them through a sieve. Make sure you scrape all the juice off the bottom of the sieve. Stir until the sugar dissolves. You should be left with a thick, gloopy, pink mixture. Beat the egg yolks in.

7. Take the pie cases out of the 24 hole baking tray and put them on a normal flat one. Put a teaspoonful of the raspberry filling in each pie case.

8. To make the meringue, heat the caster sugar and 80ml water until it reaches 110C on the sugar thermometer. Continue heating and meanwhile, whip the egg whites into stiff peaks. When the sugar syrup reaches 115C, pour it slowly into the egg whites, whipping all the time but being careful not to get any of the sugar syrup on the whisk.

9. When the meringue cools (up to 15 minutes later) sieve the cocoa into it and fold in with only 2 or 3 streaks so that the mixture is streaky. I tried to do this but it didn't really work so I just dusted the raw meringue with cocoa. Either spoon onto the filled pie cases or pipe using an icing bag without a nozzle on it. Try to make sure the filling is all covered and the meringue is as peaky as possible.

10. Bake for up to 10 minutes, then leave to cool before serving. 

These are divine hot, but I don't want to get sued if you burn yourself with hot raspberrieness so COOL THEM PEOPLE, COOL THEM. I would definitely do these again, they're great fun and so cute. For those waistline watchers, one or two of these is a lot less calorific than a slice of the big meringue pie, even though they're heavy on the topping. They don't travel well though, as I found out when I took them into uni, so treat them gently and they'll love you back. 

Ciao!

Ellie

xxx 

Red Nose Day Cupcakes

Guys, sad news.

Recently, my waistline seems to have doing something resembling the hokey cokey. You know - in, out, in, out. Shake it all about. The reasons for this are as follows:

1. I get tired and eat chocolate to wake myself up
2. I have no time to go to the gym
3. When I bake, I lick the spoon (only after I've finished mixing obviously, I'm not a beast)

So at the beginning of these week, after a weekend in Barcelona that revolved almost entirely around food, I made three decisions: I will take healthy snacks into uni instead of buying chocolate and cake, I will walk from my car to uni and back (thus adding an hour's walk to my daily exercise), I will bake only once a week and when I do I will not lick ANYTHING.

So the sad news is that I am cutting back on the baking a bit. I will still try to have one blog a week for you, and excitingly I will soon be writing a piece about the baking sector business-wise, which I will stick up here.

Anyway, I have baked this week, because my mum asked me to bake some Red Nose Day cupcakes or brownies for her cake sale at work. I decided that it would be easier to make cupcakes Red Nose themed than brownies. Here they are:

They're a bit messy but I needed to revise for a shorthand exam.

You will need:

225g sponge flour
225g butter or margarine suitable for baking (I use Stork)
225g caster sugar
225g eggs, or for those of us who are not crazy and do not weigh eggs, 4 medium eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
200g glacé cherries, halved
200-300g icing sugar
30-50ml water
enough red sugarpaste to make red noses for 24 cupcakes
24 red cupcake/muffin cases

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/gas 4. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the eggs one at a time and add the vanilla extract.

2. Sift the flour into the mixture in two batches. Do it from nice and high above the bowl to get lots of air into the mixture. Fold the flour in and then fold the cherries in.

3. Put an equal amount of batter into each cupcake case. I use an ice cream scoop because apparently that is the perfect amount of batter. Bake for 12-15 minutes.

4. When the cupcakes are golden brown and the tops spring back when lightly pressed, take them out and leave to cool.

5. When the cupcakes have cooled, level off the tops of any uneven ones with a knife (watch those fingers though). If, like me, you are trying to keep the tops off then probably don't eat them.
6. Beat the icing sugar and water together, adding the water a little at a time as you may not need it all. Spread all the cupcakes with icing.
7. Roll out the red sugarpaste (you may have to dust it with icing sugar to stop it sticking) and use something like a bottle top to cut out all the red noses, place on the cupcakes whilst icing is still wet. If you dusted the sugarpaste with icing sugar then wet a finger and use it to dab away the icing sugar.

8. Sell to raise money for charity. Hurrah!

Until the next time I decide my waistline can take cake and remain intact,

Ellie
xxx

Lemon Meringue Pie

It occurred to me this week that I have never before made a lemon meringue pie, so I decided to make one this weekend.

Lemon meringue pies are a baking classic - a crisp, butter pastry encasing a silky, bittersweet filling and topped with a pile of fluffy meringue. So understandably, I was a bit nervous about taking on this baking challenge. I feared I would produce an uneven pastry leaking a sticky, sloppy, soup of lemon curd and topped by a broken, weeping meringue.

So before I started I armed myself with the Good Housekeeping Cookery Book and some tips from this baking blog.

Luckily, my lemon meringue pie turned out pretty well for a first attempt. Not perfect - the ratio of filling to meringue was a bit off, but I think this was because I used enormous lemons and eggs that were a bit too small. The large amount of filling also caused the pie to leak, creating what Paul Hollywood would  scorn as a soggy bottom. But to you Paul, I say this: No-one has a dry bottom when you're in the room, you silver fox.

Also, my egg whites were not stiff enough to pipe, so next time I'll use the Italian meringue technique. The recipe below includes the alterations I would make next time I attempt a lemon meringue pie.

This is what the pie looked like:

And this is how to make it:

You will need:

For the pastry:
175g flour
87g butter or margarine meant for use in pastry (I used Stork)
3-5 tbsp water
an 8-inch quiche or pie tin

For the filling:
2 unwaxed lemons
2 large egg yolks
5tbsp cornflour
125g granulated sugar
300ml water

For the meringue:
2 large egg whites
75g caster sugar
80ml water
a sugar thermometer

1. Rub the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs.

 2. Add the water, a little at a time until the mixture comes together in a dough. Roll it into a ball and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

3. Roll out the dough on a floured surface until more than large enough to line the tin. Slide the tin underneath and use a piece of excess dough to push the pastry into the corners of the tin. Then trim off any excess by rolling a rolling pin across the top of the tin.

4. Bake blind for 10-15 minutes, using a piece of foil or baking parchment, weighed down with baking beads, dried beans or uncooked rice, to stop the pastry from rising.

5. Bake for another 5 minutes until firm, then put aside to cool.

6. To make the filling, zest and juice the lemons into a saucepan and add the granulated sugar and 300ml water. Heat until the sugar dissolves, then add the cornflour and whisk, then continue to heat until thickened.

7. Remove from the heat and beat in the egg yolks. Pour the warm filling into the pastry base, level out with a spatula and set aside to cool.
8. Preheat the oven to 150C. To make the meringue, heat the caster sugar and 80ml water until it reaches 110C on the sugar thermometer. Continue heating and meanwhile, whip the egg whites into stiff peaks. When the sugar syrup reaches 115C, pour it slowly into the egg whites, whipping all the time but being careful not to get any of the sugar syrup on the whisk.
9. When the meringue cools (up to 15 minutes later) pipe it onto the cooled lemon filling, making sure it is completely covered, then bake for 35 minutes.

Et voila, there it is:

Not perfect but very tasty. And if you follow my recipe yours should be a little more perfect than my first attempt.

See you next time my little meringues,

Ellie
xxx