Lemon Meringue Pie

Baking has always been a big part of my life, ever since I was a little girl I used to watch my mum/grandmother create amazing looking, and more importantly, tasting treats. Although I learnt a lot from them, I've never really been able to make my creations looks as good as there's...non the less, they taste just as good, and besides, it's apart of the home baking charm to have an imperfect creation that tastes great, and here's one of mine...
Note: The recipe for the sweet pastry is a 1 lb mix so you wont need to use all of it, it's just easier to make in bulk...you can either freeze the left overs or you can make jam tarts or something...

Ingredients

Sweet Pastry:

1 lb Self Raising Flour

4oz Lard

4oz Margerine

2 Eggs

4oz Sugar

For the filling:

6 Lemons (juice and rind)

6 Egg yolkes

2 1/4 oz / 65g Cornflour

9oz Caster Sugar

450ml / 6fl oz Water

For the meringue:

6oz Caster Sugar

6 Egg whites

2 tsp Cornflour

Method

For the pastry

Preheat the oven at Gas Mark 4/180c/350f. Take the flour, lard and margerine in a large mixing bowl and rub together until you have bread crumbs. Next, take the eggs and sugar in a seperate bowl, mix together using a falk. Using the same falk, mix the eggs and sugar into the bread crumbs until you're left with a dough like mixture. Using your hand, combine the mixture together into a large ball, now, it's ready for rolling...

Sprinkle a generous amount of flour onto your work surface and rolling pin, and roll out the pastry to about 3/4mm. Using the rolling pin, transfer the pastry into a 23cm / 9in loose-bottomed flan tin. Blind bake for about 15-20 minutes or until lightly browned.

Reduce oven temprature to 31/2 / 170c / 340f

The filling

In a saucepan, take the water and bring to a boil. Add the lemon and cornflour, and heat until thickened (almost like wallpaper paste). In a seperate bowl, use a metal whisk to combine the egg yolkes and sugar, and add to the saucepan. Heat until thickened again (to the same consistancy as before).

Once thickened, pour into the baked pastry case. Sit to cool.

The meringue

Using an electric whisk, whisk the egg whites until you have soft peaks. Gradually whisk in the sugar and cornflour until you have nice firm peaks (or until you can hold it over your head witout it moving).

Spoon meringue mixture onto the pie and return to the oven for another 15 minutes, or until the top of the meringue has hardened and sligtly browned.

Leave to cool before serving.

Yum!