Greetings Gastronauts! This is Keef Cooks,
I'm Keef and today I'm going to show you
how to a wonderful dessert - Lemon Meringue Pie!
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In the history of Keef Cooks
nobody has ever requested that I do
lemon meringue pie - which is a shame
because it's one of the world's most
wonderful desserts. I did do it a couple
of years ago - it was rubbish! I mean it
was great but the video was rubbish -
so we're hiding that. Right, but anyway - no
requests so I'll do some random
shoutouts. We've got Tris Baker and
we've got Timoteo Mendez and
we've got Charmazingable or Charmaine
or you know Charmazingable. I don't know.
Anyway, it tickled me! So yeah,
I was thinking of meringue because I love it
and I did the pavlova last week and I've
had a lemon sitting around for a fortnight
which needs using up really. Right, lemon
meringue pie - probably quite easy
Let's do it!
So we've got three elements to
deal with - we need pastry and we need the
filling which is basically more or less
lemon curd and we need the meringue so
the ingredients for the pastry - I've got
150 grams of plain white all-purpose
flour I've got 100 ml of water, I've got a
tablespoon of caster sugar, the yolk of
one egg, and 80 grams of butter - it's best
if your butter is cold so yeah...
the great thing about this recipe - it uses in total
three eggs, which is one egg yolk in this
two egg yolks in the filling and three
egg whites in the meringue so
that's a bit magical isn't it - and economical
Right, so, first thing to do is cut the butter into
little bits and whack it in there
Actually, I lied - well I was wrong
first thing I'm going to do is
mix in the sugar
and then we'll put the butter in in
little blobs - whoo - I don't normally have
this problem but it's actually 20
degrees Celsius here today in sunny Leeds
and my butter's melting - crikey!
That never happens. So when you've got your
butter in you want to just rub it with
your fingertips until you finish up with
a mixture that looks like fine
breadcrumbs. All right
That looks crummy enough to me - separate the egg
yolks - the messy way
Just give that a little stir and pop in most of the
water - we might not need all of it
in fact, yeah,
that's come together quite nicely.
Now I'll just wrap it in plastic film
and stick it in the fridge to rest
because the temperature is actually
being a problem. Right, I'm ready to make
the pastry case, so I've got the pastry
nicely rested, I've got a tin with a removable
bottom and that is - that's about 20
centimetres, 8 inches. So we're going to
blind bake the base first so I need some
flour on the worktop and me pastry
And me monster rolling pin
I love this rolling pin, it's brilliant! So we just roll it
into a circle - I kind of think there's
going to be too much pastry here so
might like a mini meringue as well.
Er, that's a bit of a mess -
start again. This is actually quite a
delicate dough, so you don't want to
overwork it. So roll the pastry around
your rolling pin. I've got lots of flour on
the underside which will help it stop
sticking - I'm not using butter because
that makes the pastry a bit greasy just
press it into the tin and it's easier
to do if you use a bit of spare dough
'cos then you don't rip the dough with your
fingernails - and I've accidentally cut it there
and I'll have to stick a bit on so I'm just
cutting off the mega excess I'm not
going to cut it to the edge of the tin just yet
because it will shrink when it bakes. So
I've got this leftover and I'll make a
little one in there. Actually it might even be
two - you never know. So there's the pastry
case and we just want to prick it with a
prick it with a fork - you don't want your fork to go all
the way through the pastry - this is just
to stop it
help stop it puffing up because that's
what it wants to do. And the other thing
to help stop it puffing up is a weight.
I use some rice -
other people use dried beans or whatever -
you can actually spend money on baking
beans if you wish to. So I've got some
greaseproof paper which I've just squished up,
crumpled up because that makes it easier
to adopt the shape of the case and then
pour in the rice. Just have to remember
not to eat it at any point!
Right, so you want to get your oven preheating to 180
degrees Celsius if it's a convection
oven - a fan oven - or 200 degrees Celsius
if it isn't. Right I'm using the little
oven - this is a combi oven and we got this
a year ago and I'd completely forgotten
that it wasn't just a microwave - it's
actually a microwave, a convection oven and
a grill - or broiler - so it's brilliant!
and oops
I'll slam my pastry cases in and they
want to cook for 15 minutes so while
that's going you might be wondering why
we blind bake pastry cases, and the
reason is that, well, two reasons - one is
with this - you do this with open topped
pies and flans and things and quiches
because the fillings don't take as long
to cook as the pastry, so you want the
pastry to get a head start kind of thing
and the other thing is the filling won't
sink into the pastry - you want that with
like a meat pie because it's wonderful
but you don't want that with this kind
of pie flan type thing
OK there's the partially blind baked
cases - we just remove the weighting and
what I'm going to do now is just trim
off the extra excess pastry because it
probably shouldn't shrink anymore
fingers crossed
just paint the inside with some beaten
egg and again this will stop the filling
from sinking into the pastry and do the
sides and the rim as well. And then that
wants to go back in the oven for another ten minutes
OK there's our pastry case, blind baked
and looking nice and so the next thing
to do is make the filling, the lemon curd
and the ingredients for that are here
I've got two tablespoons of corn flour
- cornstarch - 80 grams of caster sugar
(powdered sugar), 80 grams of unsalted
butter, 2 egg yolks hidden away inside
there and the zest and juice of two lemons
and the juice of one orange. And now I
want to get the zest off the lemons...
ooh that smells really lemony - amazing!
Now we need to get the juice out of these
lemons and the orange
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Now I'll just put this on low heat and
we want to stir the corn flour and the
sugar together with the lemon rind and
then gradually add in the juice - the
lemon and orange juice - basically we want
this all to get mixed into a smooth kind
of paste and as it warms up it will
start to thicken. OK that's nice and
thick and gloopy
so we'll take that off the heat and we'll add
the butter a bit at a time and stir
that til it's melted and if it's getting
too thick you can add a bit of hot water
I think this is a little bit too thick
now it's possibly a bit too runny.
Come on butter - melt melt melt!
And now we pop the egg yolks in
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Stir that in well - nice smooth goopy
mixture and leave that to cool down
Alright so we've got our pastry case made,
we've got our lemon curd made and now
the last bit is to make the meringue.
So I've got a hundred and fifty grams of
caster sugar and the three egg whites.
Some people also put a teaspoon of corn
flour in and I would have done that but I've
just finished it off. Useless eh?
RIght, beat this for about five minutes til we get stiff peaks
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OK that looks pretty stiff to me
[ LAUGHS ]
So now what we want to do is add in the
sugar a little bit at a time
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keep on beating that til it's all incorporated
and smooth and glossy
Right, so there's the merang-way looking
lovely. Now my phone just went off and
you know I said earlier that nobody in
the entire history of Keef Cooks has
asked for a lemon meringue pie - I just
got a YouTube message from Stefan Kempkes
saying 'any chance of making a lemon tart?'
Stefan - case - lemon mixture -
I reckon that's a lemon tart!
And I also reckon you're psychic or you know where I
live and you're hiding in the garden
somewhere. Anyway, this is for you as well.
So I bought this palette knife - might as
well - Ishould really use it. So we'll just
spread out the filling so there's no
gaps and try and get a nice smooth
finish on the top. And now spoon on the
meringue. Start around the edge and then
fill in the middle. I've got a slight
suspicion that this might not work
perfectly because meringues don't like
humidity - egg whites are hygroscopic
which means they absorb moisture from
the air and if that happens then you're
not going to get the best meringue ever
So it's a really hot day - amazingly - and
it's starting to feel kind of muggy.
But anyway, we'll see, we'll see.
Looking good so far. So that goes in the oven for 20 minutes
OK, time's up. Now the tricky thing
with meringues is you have to let them
cool down slowly, so what you can do is
just open the door very slightly and
that will let the heat out gently so
theoretically it won't - the meringue
won't crack and collapse. And leave it in
there for half an hour and then
we can take it out and put it on a wire rack to
cool down completely.
OK it's been cooling in the oven for a half an hour
it's still fairly warm actually, but it's
looking spectacular, so let's see if we can...
I'm not sure, I don't know if I want
to do this but let's see if we can get
him out of the tin - yeah! And...
get him on the cooling rack without smashing him
to bits. This might not be a great idea but...
No! I think I'll just leave that for a
bit longer to cool down 'cos I can see the
filling is not set properly yet
OK, I think we'll just zap this with the old
torch de blow...
[ LAUGHS ] almost set that one on fire! Hey ho...
Don't try this at home children! Right
Oh no...
Well, that's ruined that... hmm
OK it looks to me like the filling, the
lemon curd is actually a bit runny, so I
don't quite know what to do but...
maybe I'll stick it in the fridge for a bit, see
what happens.
OK magnificent peaks and troughs
and I'm going to have a bit
that is obscenely good
and quite hard to make but worth it!
And that's that, I hope you enjoyed it, now
please do the usual - likes, shares,
comments, subscriptions, donations,
patronage - all that good stuff - or just
some of it. And thank you for watching
and see you next time!
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