Lemon Meringue Tarts

Often on weekends, I spend time cooking with the kids - not only does this give me a chance to spend some time in the kitchen (yeah I know, who would have thought, right?) but it's a great bonding experience and introduces some great life skills to the kids. I have fond childhood memories of Lemon Meringue Pie being my favourite "cake" of all time, something mum would often treat me to when we were out and about, and thought it would be a great one to introduce my kids to.

After hunting around for a good recipe, I pestered some of my "foodie" friends, and Adam (@RedVespa) who has a great food blog over at Totally Addicted to Taste suggested the Bourke Street Bakery recipe (links below).

Now I certainly don't admit to being any sort of pâtissier, in fact my experience is minimal at best, but I figured these were worth a shot, so with much nervousness and anticipation we started on a journey like no other, down the path of individual lemon meringue tarts. In hindsight I would have given the recipe a more thorough reading as the entire process, rather than taking a few hours, spread across the weekend.

First came the sweet short crust pastry, quite a simple process and I don't think we over-worked it, making sure it remained "short" - apparently the use of a small amount of vinegar in the recipe also helps with this. So into the food processor, a few quick pulses, onto the bench, combine, wrap and chill in the fridge. 

Once this had chilled for several hours, it was time to blind bake the tart cases.... hmmm what to use as a tin? A muffin pan! Hence our tarts have a much different shape to what might be expected. The concept of lining the cases and filling them with dried peas was greeted with some very surprised looks from the kids, but they probably enjoyed this part of the process the most!

Not looking at the recipe thoroughly came to bite us a little at this stage as we progressed with making the lemon curd - no issues in the making of it, and the fresh lemons from "Nanny's tree" were perfect! What I hadn't read was how long this needed to be refrigerated in order to set... so in to the fridge it went, only to be left until the next day (along with the already blind baked cases).

Next morning: filling the cases... No piping bag? No problem. It was easy enough to spoon the beautifully set lemon curd into the cases, although at completion it seems we may have put a little too much into some of them to accomodate the meringue on top.

Now onto the italian meringue... I'd made meringue for all sorts of different things before, but always a more "traditional" meringue, rather than the italian type. I'd never made candy before (as in boiling/reducing sugar syrup until it gets to a hard ball state) so was petrified, especially with the idea of having sugar syrup at over 100°C around the kids! So other than helping out with the measuring of the sugar, and a little of the whisking (before the introduction of the sugar syrup) I had to handle most of this on my own.

I don't actually have a candy thermometer, but I do have a milk thermometer due to my other obsession with coffee - while designed to be used when texturing milk and ensuring the optimum temperature of 65°C is not exceeded, there was plenty more room on the scale, but it only went up to 110°, so I went back to the traditional method of testing the stage of the sugar by dropping a small amount into some cold water (this is where the hard ball definition comes from).

Pouring the sugar syrup into the bowl while holding the beater with the other hand proved to be an interesting experience, especially as the syrup was starting to cool and thicken, but most of it made it in ok (This is where we put our hands out for donations toward a Kitchen Aid stand mixer).

No piping bag to pipe the meringue on, however the tart cases already had a nice rustic, home made look to them, so we spooned the meringue on top of the tarts and teased it into spikes with a fork - not the prettiest, but a suitable compromise. The meringue was then browned under a hot grill (no blowtorch on hand either).

Overall, we ended up with some rather rustic looking tarts, but the flavour is amazing!

Ideally, yes we would have had tart cases, a piping bag and a blowtorch on hand in order to get things 100% - but this was a great way for the kids to learn how complex recipes can still be acheived without all the bells and whistles and the only thing that suffers is presentation.

The recipes used can be found online at:
Beansprout's Cafe for the pastry and lemon curd
Køkken69 for the italian meringue

I'm now convinced that the Bourke Street Bakery's Book is next on the "must buy" list, as I've heard great things about this and many of the other recipes.