I seemed to be making a lot of recipes lately which require egg yolks thus leaving me with a glut of egg whites.  I haven’t made a lime meringue pie before but as we get more limes here than lemons it made sense to do so… Make a pastry case using either your own tried and tested recipe or following mine.

Make the shortcrust pastry.

I use half fat to flour so for example for 8oz of flour I use 4oz of fat. 

The flour is not same here and very recently when I was comparing items from the UK against the US….I made some startling discoveries of the differences and it has made an instant difference to my cooking especially my pastry…. I will say no more but I had a silent rant!

Again I cannot get the same cooking fat so I use an olive oil based fat and crispo. For this sort of pastry when I want a nice soft pastry I used1/3 olive oil fat and 2/3 crispo.

And cake flour, not all purpose flour, and the difference was remarkable…….mmmm I am still silently ranting…lol

Prepare your pastry making sure you use ice cold water from the fridge and wrap in clingfilm and put in the chiller for at least 20 minutes.

Roll out and line a pie plate or dish.

Some prebake at this point and some don’t …I have done both depending on the time I have or just how I feel.

If I don’t prebake I stand the dish on a baking tray so as to make sure there are no  “soggy bottoms”

For this pie, I pre-bake the pie case…I cook the pie case on 190 degrees for about 25-30 mins if you just lightly scrape the edge of the pie it should just flake away.

Now let’s make the filling…

For the filling:

• 1 1/2 cups of sugar
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup fresh lime juice or lemon juice
• 1 egg yolk
• 2tsp butter at room temperature
• 1 cup boiling water
• 2tsp lime zest.

Let’s Cook!

Combine sugar, cornstarch, water and lime juice. Whisk until smooth.

Stir in butter and egg yolks. Then gradually add boiling water.

Bring mix to the boil, reduce heat and simmer for 5 mins.

The mix should be fairly thick and glossy, if you want to add green colouring at this point then you can.

I didn’t so my filling was a lemon colour because of egg yolks.

Pour into pre-baked pastry case.

Meringue Topping:

• 3 Egg whites
• 3/4 cup sugar.

Let’s Cook!:

Beat egg whites until stiff peaks. Add half of the sugar and beat until stiff and then fold in the rest of the sugar. Put on top of lime/lemon filling and make sure edges are sealed.

Bake in preheated oven on 175 until the top is golden. About 10 mins.

Enjoy!

Thank you for reading and have a lovely week x