Lemon Meringue Pie Recipe Demonstration - Joyofbaking.com

hi I'm Stephanie Jaworski of joy baking calm today we're going to make a lemon meringue pie and this is what it looks like we have three layers we have the crust on the bottom we have this really light and creamy kind of slightly tart lemon filling and then on top we have a really nice sweet meringue so um the first thing you will need is your crust now my mom always made a graham cracker crust but today I'm going to actually use a pastry crust now if you want to do that you it needs to be pre baked and I do have a recipe along with the video on the site that tells you exactly how to do it to this point and the good thing is if you're using it you know either type of crust if you want to kind of make this pie in stages you could make your pastry crush your grain cracker crust the day before and then just cover it and then that step will be done and then for our lemon filling this is a stovetop pudding and whenever you're doing a stovetop pudding it's best to have all your ingredients out you don't want to be running around when you're in the middle of making your pudding so the first thing you will need to do is separate four large eggs you want the yolks in One Bowl and the whites and another and what we're going to do is is put the whites aside because we're gonna use that for the meringue and then you want to like I said bring me your eggs to room temperature now for large egg yolks would be about 65 grams and then of course we're making a lemon filling so we need lemon lemon juice and we need the lemon zest so you will need one tablespoon which is about four grams finely grated lemon zest and that really is the the outside peel of your lemon and you will need 1/2 a cup 120 milliliters of freshly squeezed lemon juice now how many lemons does it take wall it really depends like this size I find two to three lemons will give you a half a cup it's always better to have a extra because you never know and then because you're gonna take the outside skin always wash your lemons really well if you can buy organic and then we're going to great so you could use it in just a box grater the fine part of your box grater or I like to use this these micro planes are really handy and then you just kind of run that over the top of your lemon now you don't want to grate the white underneath because that's quite bitter so don't do that and then once you take all the skin off which I find one tablespoon is about two large lemons like this and then you want to squeeze your lemons to cut them in half and squeeze them tight just use one of these juicers and then I have a measuring cup with a fine strainer because as you can see their seeds and the pulp which we don't want so but we're gonna put that aside because we're not going to add the lemon juice and zest until the end of our pudding and along with that you will need two tablespoons 25 grams of butter and I like to cut that into little small pieces so it like melts easier into our hot pudding so we you know you want to have your egg yolks in it you know heat proof Bowl and then you will need a saucepan try to use a heavy bottom and always better you know what you're you're putting to burn and you will need a half a cup no sorry one cup which is 200 grams of granulated white sugar and then you will need 6 tablespoons which is 50 grams of corn starch also called corn flour and that's going to be our thickening that's what thickens our pudding now you may say what's the difference between lemon curd and a lemon filling mainly that cornstarch I mean a lemon curd you don't have cornstarch you don't have that thickener and then also we want a little salt to bring out the flavour so a quarter of a teaspoon one gram and then I'm just going to whisk that together now the other thing that's a little different between a lemon filling and a lemon curd is what I'm going to actually whisk in 1 and a half cups which is 360 milliliters of water I actually like to use like a hot to a boiling water because then I find it dissolves that sugar a little quicker and the reason you'd say well why aren't we using lemon juice well if I used like another 1/2 cups of lemon juice that that lemon filling is going to be really tart and I and a lemon filling is not quite as tart and tangy as a lemon curd so that's why if you ask why we use in water that's why so what I'm gonna do is gradually whisk that hot water into my sugar mixture I mean you could use a normal room temperature a lot of recipes say to that but you know my mom always use a hot water and I find it kind of dissolves that cornstarch to a lot easier if it's hot now I'm going to put this over medium heat we want to bring this up to a boil but you know a slow I don't want to like put it on high and bring it up too fast I want to do it gradually and whisk all the time because I want that sugar to melt and the cornstarch to dissolve so just whisk it all the time or you could stir it until it comes up to a boil okay so I'm up to a boil kind of adjust your heat and then keep stirring and you want to stir stir stir until it becomes quite thick and opaque in color which I'm almost there see it doesn't take very long that looks good and kind of have that plop plop kind of sound and how to describe it but that looks good so now I'm just going to nice and thick and take it off the heat for now as you can see that's what you're looking for that makes that pop and now we want to add the yolks into the hot mixture so of course what you don't want to do is just pour those yolks right in there because they'll start cooking so what we want to do is kind of temper it and so what I'm gonna take my whisk and just kind of break those yolks up and then I'm gonna take a little bit of my mixture here and add it in and whisk all the time so hopefully my yolk stuff start cooking and then I mean if you did have that you could just strain your mixture at the end we get to strain the pudding and that will solve that problem because sometimes that happens so what I'm gonna do now is and I want to whisk the whole time I'm gonna gradually add my yolks you really want to use a whisk for this spoon you could if you have to okay that looks good as you can see it's the yolks that are that's going to give our pudding that yellow color so if yours doesn't look like mine it's probably just the difference in the color of the yolks you're using so now what we're going to do is just put this back on the heat for just a bit because we want to cook those yolks just a little more now we don't want a high heat here we just want a medium medium-low I would say and just bring it up to a just up to a boil a little boil and whisking all the time of course okay so we're if you can see again we're kind of got that plop plop those big bubbles that are kind of bursting so that's that's about all I'm going to cook that I turn off the heat give it a good whisk so now what we're gonna do is just add in our butter that'll be for richness of flavor there and the zest that gives you know it's zest that really gives a lot of lemon flavor to the filling or the filling and then pour in or lemon juice pour in the lemon juice at the end instead of the beginning that really keeps its sharp flavor so that's why we're adding it at the end and not at the beginning with the water and that's our filling so what you want to do now because we have to make our meringue so I'm going to just cover this now normally you would just cover radon there but because I need that pot for my meringue I'm going to transfer my filling just to a bowl you don't have to do that at home and then I'm going to cover it with plastic wrap right onto the surface so that there's no skin forming because we don't want that for our ply so I just take care put that on and then I'm just gonna wash my pot and then when we come back I'm going to show you how to make the meringue topping the biggest problem people have with the lemon meringue pie is that there a lot of times people will get a layer of moisture between the meringue and the filling which we call weeping and well that can be caused from over whipping your egg whites the biggest reason for that is that your meringue is not cooked through and the reason why the problem with that is normally you you just beat your egg whites and sugar until stiff peaks you put it on top of your filling and you put it in the oven and you bake it until the meringue Browns but you know the problem with that could be as well it's brown the meringue may not be cooked through especially in the center so what I'm going to do is I'm gonna make what is called a Swiss meringue and what that means is I'm going to heat my egg whites and sugar first and that out and kind of heated or what you call cook it so it's up to that temperature so I don't even have to cook my pie after I do my meringue I can just broil it and we're brown it on top so what you will need is a saucepan of simmering water and you'll need a I like a stainless steel bowl and you will need your four large egg whites if you want to go by weight that would be a hundred and twenty grams of egg whites and then you will need some sugar 1/2 a cup which is a hundred grams of granulated white sugar and whisk that together along with I'm adding a tables or half a teaspoon sorry which is two grams of cream of tartar which will help the stabilize our whites and that means they don't dry out when you're whipping them if you don't have cream of tartar you can use an equal amount of lemon juice where some people just preferred add a pinch of salt like a quarter of a teaspoon one gram of salt so now I'm just gonna put this over simmering water now we do need to stir whisk and that what we're gonna do is heat the whites dissolve the sugar we don't want to cook the whites and want flecks of cooked egg in there so you want to whisk it constantly and you don't want that that water under there to be too hot and what we're gonna do is bring it up to it's really like hot if you touch it but the best way I mean is with a candy thermometer and you want to bring it up to 160 fahrenheit which is 71 Celsius and that the reason we're taking up like some recipes call for a lower temperature but 160 is the temperature you need to reach for that to kill off this any chance of Salmonella which you know any risk of that so that's why I'm taking it up to 160 so just keep you know whisking and and I'm gonna put my mom butter in there and once we get to 160 we'll take it off the heat okay we're at 160 take it off to heat that out make sure you clean the end of your thermometer so that's what we look it looks like so now what we're going to do stick this I'm going to we're going to whip our egg whites until they reach stiff peaks so I'm gonna transfer this now if you had a metal mixing bowl then you could just you know use that over the simmering water and then you wouldn't have to transfer but I'm using a glass bowl so that's why I use the stainless steel and if the trailer so now what we're gonna do is just whip this I'm going to start at slow speed bring it gradually up to high speed and just keep whipping it until it reaches stiff peaks okay let's check out meringue so that looks good no II didn't see that no holds it speaks some people say although I'm not going to do it if you hold the bowl over your head it should the meringue shouldn't fall out but I don't want I don't really want try that and then so I like to flavor my meringue so I'm going to add a half a teaspoon which is two grams of pure vanilla extract if you prefer just a plain meringue you don't need to add that you can add some other type of flavoring and I'm just going to beat that in okay yep then nice tip people like that so we're done our meringue and we have our pie crust and we have our filling now there's there's a lot of debate should your pie feel should your lemon filling be hot when you put the meringue or should it be a cold room temperature I've tried a different ways actually because some people say that another reason for that layer of moisture that weeping is because you're putting the meringue on a cold filling so but anyways whether you people you believe that or not I don't know but I do find I've tried it both ways and I do find having the filling quite warm is the best way because then that when you put the meringue on it kind of adhere to the surface so if your your lemon filling you know you wanted to make it ahead of time or something and it cooled off then just reheat it gently till it's warm and then just pour it in there and it's kind of spread it out if you find you have beads of moisture some people say that they get beads of moisture on the top of the meringue after it's cooked and cooled now that usually is because you over whipped your meringue okay carnival can be a little complicated so now I like to use two spoons and and I didn't mention but if you found when you're filling when you finished cooking it that you have little pieces of coke today just strain it I didn't do that because I didn't find any of mine but just in case just strain it and you're done so now another problem people find say is that their meringue shrinks you know you they put it in the oven especially if you're baking and it shrinks so one way to prevent that is when you're putting your meringue onto your filling go right up to the crust and then kind of also to make sure that meringue adheres to the the filling kind of press down to get rid of any air pockets and then just go all the way around doing that I like to start around the edges and then fill in the center see I'm just kind of going to the edge make sure it adheres to the crust and then pushing down slightly to get rid of any air pockets okay so we're almost done like you said just kind of pat down make sure it's all the way around and making sure it goes right up to the crust you know some people say they're more rain just slips right off their pie after it cools that'll kind of adhere it and the other reason some people say that happens is because you're not putting your meringue on a hot filling so I err on the side I think of using a warm to hot filling I think is the best what I've decided okay so then we have our room and if you want you can kind of you know get really decorative with the back of a spoon that Peaks kind of do how you want and then all that's left now is to oil it or if you have one of those handheld propane torches you could use that actually that's probably better if you can get a more even but I don't have mine here so I'm going to use the broiler so the broiler means your top element have it on high have the at the rack at a good so there's it's not like you don't want the top of this by touching your to that top hot element you're in a little bit of space and I find when I'm broiling I kind of keep turning and hopefully if we do it right we won't burn the top we just want a nice golden brown so we'll give it a try okay I'm gonna go with that there we go so our pie our lemon meringue pie is done I think it looks pretty good now if I take this and shake it you can see that that lemon filling is still a little it hasn't firmed up so I don't want to cut it right now what I like to do is let it sit at least a couple hours that will give the filling time to firm up so when I cut it I can get it you know pretty good slice some people like their lemon meringue pie cold or Italy's chilled a little if you like that if you prefer that then I would let it sit you know a couple hours and then you could put it into the fridge for a little bit to chill it so when we come back I will cut a slice it's been about two hours so let's cut a slice so using a sharp knife then I like to have a damp cloth and just wipe off my knife in between slices where you get a little cleaner slice okay see if we got that that first life is always the hardest to get out I find okay I almost got it there may be a little extra but that's okay so there we have it see well if you can see it here so we have the nice crust we have the beautiful lemon filling and the meringue which you can see is nicely attached to the lemon filling so now let's try a little bit here Kress my love of the crust you know you can see why a lemon meringue pie is is real is very popular I mean that meringue it's sweet it's kind of you know fluffy and it really tempers the you know it's not a really really to sharp flavor of lemon but you know it's a nice balance there this the tartness of the lemon and the sweetness of the meringue and then you can't cope it's me you can't go wrong with a nice buttery crust to go along with the rest so try this and until next time I'm Stephanie Jaworski of joy baking calm

Channel: Joy of Baking

Views: 727,094

Keywords: dessert, baking, cooking, recipe, food, kitchen, homemade, howto, diy, joyofbaking, Joy of Baking, Stephanie Jaworski, Rick Jaworski, Meringue (Food), Lemon Meringue Pie (Dish), Pie (Type Of Dish), Lemon (Food), Recipes, Cook, Do It Yourself (Hobby), how to make lemon meringue pie, how to make lemon pie, lemon meringue pie recipe, lemon pie recipe, how to make pie, how to bake, easy recipes, how to cook, how to make

Id: 7TGtdzFs1eE

Length: 23min 57sec (1437 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 12 2015