Lemon Meringue Pie Pimped up Easter Style

I had a hankering for lemon meringue pie this Easter but wanted to jazz it up with an Easter theme. Normally, to make lemon meringue pie, you use up many egg yolks to make the lemon curd, and then you use the remaining egg whites to whip up a meringue which you just pile on top in a delightfully messy and tasty way. Whilst I love a huge pile of meringue as much as the next person, but I couldn't help but think that something more creative could be done with it. So I got to thinking, and came up with this plan of Easter themed animals and shapes that I think makes a really nice alternative for an Easter celebration cake. Of course, many other shapes can be made, you can really let your imagination run wild!

Ingredients

For the pastry

• 225 g/8 oz plain flour
• 110 g/4 oz butter
• 45 g/1¾ oz icing sugar (you can blitzt unrefined sugar in a coffee grinder to make your own icing sugar)
• 1 medium free-range egg, beaten

For the lemon filling

• 100 ml lemon juice (roughly four lemons)
• Zest of about 4 lemons (if desired)
• 50 g/2 oz cornflour
• 200 ml/7 fl oz water
• 135 g/5 oz caster sugar
• 4 free-range egg yolks
• 70 g/2.5 oz unsalted butter

For the meringue topping

• 4 free-range egg whites, room temperature
• 250 g/8 3/4 oz caster sugar
• 2 level tsp cornflour
• 1 tsp lemon juice or white wine vinegar

For the buttercream

• 1/2 cup of milk
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup icing sugar (sifted)
• 1/2 cup softened butter
• This is half the amount of the Super Fluffy, Not-too-Sweet, Cooked Frosting from yoyomax.

For the decorations

• Chocolate icing for writing 
• Pink glitter writing icing
• Green food colouring
• Chocolate mini eggs

Pastry

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.

2. Rub in the butter with the flour, until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and the egg and one or two tablespoons of water, in order to get the dough to come together into a ball.

3. Tip the pastry onto a lightly floured work surface and roll out to a 3mm thickness. Use the rolling pin to lift the pastry up and transfer it to line a 23cm/9in loose-bottomed flan tin. Be careful not to stretch the pastry as you tuck it into the corners. Cover in cling film and place in the refrigerator to chill for 30 minutes.

4. Once the time is up, take out the pastry-lined tin, prick the base a few times with a fork and trim the excess pastry. 

5. Line the pastry case with greaseproof pastry and place in baking beans. Bake for about 15 minutes, and then take out the paper and leave the beans to cool. Replace the pastry case-lined tin into the oven for a further 5 minutes to dry out. 6. Remove from the oven and reduce the temperature to 170C/340F/Gas 3½.

Lemon Curd Filling

1. Mix the lemon zest (if using) and juice with the cornflour and stir to form a smooth paste. Measure 200 ml/9 fl oz of water into a pan and bring to the boil. Add the lemon cornflour mixture to the hot water and stir over the heat until the mixture has thickened, then remove from the heat. The mixture has a tendency to thicken very suddenly, so keep constantly stirring and don't take your eye off it. 

2. Allow the mixture to cool for a few minutes, and in the mean time, mix together the sugar and egg yolks in a bowl. Carefully whisk into the lemon mixture in the pan, and then slowly add the butter. Then stir over a medium heat until thickened. I was a bit worried about not having cooked it for long enough to set, but it turned out fine in the end. The consistency should be like below when it's finished, leaving a coat on the back of a spoon or spatula. Set aside for a few minutes to cool. 

Finished consistency of lemon curd, coating the back of the spatula

I didn't much like the zest in the curd and also felt that it gave a slight bitter taste to the curd, so I passed the curd through a sieve. You can also do this if your curd has turned a bit lumpy, and you need to smooth it out. But this shouldn't happen as long as you have dissolved your cornflour fully before adding to the mix, and not overheating it once the egg yolks are added, in which case you'd have bits of scrambled eggs in it!).
Once you're happy with the filling and it has cooled slightly, pour into the pastry case. 

Meringue topping

1. Whisk the egg whites with an electric whisk or in a free-standing mixer on maximum speed until soft peaks form. Gradually, still whisking on maximum speed, add generous teaspoons of the caster sugar until the mixture is stiff and shiny and stands in stiff peaks.
2. Blend the lemon juice or vinegar and cornflour together in a cup and mix until smooth. Whisk this into the meringue mixture for extra stability.
3. Scoop some of the meringue into a piping bag, and pipe a single layer a few cm thick on top of the lemon curd filled case as a base. Go from the outside in, and as you go along, ensure that there are no gaps between the edge of the pastry case and in between the piped meringue, otherwise the meringue will shrink, and you will end up with much larger, unsightly gaps. 


First layer of meringue on the pie after baking

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes at 170C/340F/Gas 3½, and when baking is completed, turn off the oven and leave the door open so that it cools down for the next set of meringues,

4. During this baking, there is plenty of time to use the remaining meringue to pipe the Easter shapes that will go on top of the cake. 

Line two baking sheets with baking paper and stick down with a bit of butter in each corner if the paper keeps rolling up. Pipe about 9 or 10 meringue nests with a star shaped nozzle. A Wilton 2D or Ateco 887 tips are supposed to be good, but I didn't have either of those, so I had to make do with a smaller star-shaped tip. I think the results are not quite so good, so I'll be getting one of those tips in soon!

The pieces can be placed quite close to each other because the meringues do not expand a great deal during the baking

5. Swap the tip to a larger, round shaped piping nozzle. I used Wilton tip 7 for the small chicks and 10 for the larger pieces of meringue. Start the nests in the middle and swirl round, before adding an outside circle as the side of the nest. 

For the chicks, tint the remainder of the meringue with some yellow food colouring, and start with the body, holding the piping bag away from you at roughly 45 degree angle, pipe the body, and then pull away at the end to create the tail. Then pipe the head, holding the bag near to you at a similar angle, and pull away at the end to create the beak.

You can add smaller pieces in between the nests as above, because the meringue doesn't expand during the cooking. As long as two pieces are not touching, they will not stick together

6. If you like your meringue crisp on the outside and soft and marshmallowy on the inside, have the oven on 150C/300F/Gas 2 and turn down to 140C/275F/Gas mark 1 for 1 h 30 min to 2 h. Then turn off the oven and leave the meringues in the oven until completely cool.

If you prefer harder and crunchier meringues, turn the oven to about 50 - 70 C or the lowest setting on your oven, and leave the meringues in there for about 6 - 8 hours. The point of this is that you're not really cooking the meringues, but rather drying them out. This method gets quite crunchy meringues and there is no danger of them colouring at all. This is my preferred method and the one I have used here.

In both cases, do not open the oven door in the first 45 minutes to avoid cracking, and then check them after 1 hour. If your environment is quite humid, you could leave the oven door slightly ajar or propped open with a bottle cap or other object.

After baking, the meringues should come out quite hard, and come away easily from the baking paper. Be careful though, the meringues are quite delicate though, and prone to breaking/crushing!

The meringues after baking

Extra bits and pieces for constructing the rabbit and some larger chicks. It always helps to make some spares in case any pieces crack or break

I found that the best way to make the rabbit was to pipe separate pieces for the body, feet, tail, head and ears and then later I stuck them together using buttercream.

Buttercream

This is the same recipe I used for the Heart-shaped Romantic Cake, and it's from YoYoMax. You can use regular buttercream if you prefer the taste, or even better, try a meringue buttercream for this particular pie. 

1. Place 1/2 cup of milk into a medium saucepan. Add 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour to the milk and whisk together. Cook over medium high heat, stirring continuously, until it becomes a very thick smooth paste. This can take 3-4 minutes. Remove from heat and let cool completely.

2. Beat the cooled flour/milk mixture with 1/2 tsp of vanilla on high speed for 4 minutes. It will become a smooth paste again.

3. In a separate bowl combine the 1/2 cup sugar and 1/2 cup softened butter together with a electric mixer. Blend on high for 4 minutes.

4. Combine the flour/milk, butter/sugar mixtures together and beat on high speed with an electric mixer for 3-4 minutes until super fluffy.

Construction of the pie topping

1. After carefully removing all the meringue pieces, start to arrange them on top of the pie to see which is the best arrangement. 

When you are happy with the look, you can start to stick some of the pieces down. First, stick the nests down. Then add the eyes to the chicks using chocolate icing. 

Add eyes to the rabbit too, and use the pink icing to add the nose, smile and ear detail on the rabbit. I love this glitter writing icing from Asda. 

Once ready, stick the rabbit pieces together using the buttercream.  

Pipe eyes on the chicks with chocolate icing

2. Colour the remainder of the buttercream a green colour for the grass, and put a grass piping tip into a piping bag. Pipe grass details around the nests and other places where appropriate. Pipe a little buttercream into each nest as well, using it to secure three mini eggs into each nest and a meringue chick perched on each one. 

Hope you enjoy this cake, fun to make and good to eat! :)

Happy Easter!