Mom's Favourite Lemon Meringue Pie

That Perfect Balance of Sweet and Tart

As the cooler months roll in, you might be surprised that we are bringing you a summery lemon meringue pie recipe. Well, the reason for this choice is my mom. Her birthday is coming up and lemon meringue pie is her absolute favourite. Whenever I think of her, I think of this dessert. Twotocook is intended to help you find ways to cook together - with whomever. Whether its your partner, sibling, friend, or mom, we hope to inspire you to get together in the kitchen. I hope you enjoy this recipe that I made with my mom (you might spot her hand in the photos!) A great showstopper of a dessert to make with a loved one and share with family and friends this holiday season. Without further ado, let's get cooking!

zucchini flower fritters. a rustic Italian vegetarian dish also known as fiori di zucca fritti. This is a popular ingredient in Italy summers

Tips & Tricks

To start, you must prep your dough. This is a very classic recipe - simply butter, flour, (a little sugar) and ice cold water. First mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl and add cubes of cold unsalted butter. Smush the butter cubes into the flour with your hands until a crumbly mixture forms. Then add cold water a tablespoon at a time until the dough can come together. I like to refrigerate the dough for at least 1 hour before rolling out and shaping into a pie plate. Alternatively you can make the dough the night before and leave it overnight in the fridge.

zucchini flower fritters. a rustic Italian vegetarian dish also known as fiori di zucca fritti. This is a popular ingredient in Italy summers. here are the washed and prepped zucchini flowers

Then you can roll out your dough into a pie plate or a tart pan if desired. Feel free to get creative with the design of the edges! And don't forget to prick the bottom with a fork to help with shrinkage of the dough. While you preheat the oven to 425°F, you can refrigerate the pie shell. Before putting it in the oven, cover the pie shell with foil and add pie weights or dried beans to ensure the shell keeps its shape. Bake the shell for 15 minutes at 425°F (with foil and pie weights) and then 25 minutes at 375°F without foil and pie weights.

Now for the filling! First I like to prep my ingredients - juice lemons (2/3 cup worth), add sugar, water and cornstarch to a medium size pan and separate egg whites and egg yolks. To reduce the number of bowls I have to clean, I like to separate my egg whites into the bowl I will use to make the meringue - if using a stand mixer, this would be the bowl to use, otherwise any large bowl will do. Remember to leave the egg white bowl out at room temperature as this will help you achieve those voluminous stiff peaks you are looking for in a meringue.

zucchini flower fritters. a rustic Italian vegetarian dish also known as fiori di zucca fritti. This is a popular ingredient in Italy summers. finished fritters topped with maldon salt

Over medium heat, cook the sugar water mixture until it forms a thick clear paste. Whisk constantly while it is on the heat to avoid clumps. Then with the pot off the heat, add some of the hot mixture to the egg yolks to temper the eggs - 1/4 cup at a time, whisking in between each addition. This is a very important step because adding the egg yolks directly into the hot mixture could leave you with scrambled eggs! Once you have incorporated 4-5 ladles of the hot mixture into the egg yolks, transfer all of the egg yolk mixture into the sauce pan and whisk to combine. Now with the pot back on the heat, add in the lemon juice and whisk util the lovely golden mixture is perfectly thick again. Now that's a perfect lemon meringue pie filling from scratch! Be sure to get high quality eggs with orange yolks so that you too can achieve this beautiful golden-coloured filling.

Transfer the custard mixture into a clean bowl and cover the surface with plastic wrap and place in the fridge until cold (2 hours). At this point, your pie shell should also be at room temperature.

TIP: Ensure that the pie crust is no longer hot and your custard is cold before layering in your custard. This is essential to ensuring the custard does not become runny and ooze once the pie is assembled. I have found from testing this recipe, that using room temperature custard can lead to a liquid custard, which we do not want.

Before assembling, whip up a quick meringue in your stand mixer or with an electric mixer. Add some cream of tartar to your egg whites to help it form stiff peaks. Once soft peaks form, slowly add in the sugar. The sugar will strengthen the peaks and make it shiny but adding too early or all at once can deflate your progress - literally.

Now we have our shell, custard and the meringue. All that's left is to layer them together! To a room temperature pie shell, add in the cold custard from the fridge. Then pile on the meringue being gentle not to interfere with its volume! Place the pie into the oven at 350°F for 15 minutes so the meringue can get that nice golden color. For those that want to go the extra mile, you can detail the meringue with a blow torch to get that s'mores look! (warning: be careful not to put the blow torch flame too close to the meringue or it will catch on fire. However, if that burnt marshmallow aesthetic is what you are going for, then you can disregard this note)

Now that's a pie! Sweet meringue with a perfectly tart custard and flaky buttery crust - a super special treat. Sliced open, you can admire the layers - a crisp crust with a golden custard and a meringue that's 1 foot tall! My mom thoroughly enjoyed this, and I hope you two do too.

The Recipe

How this works?

Seeing as some of you may be new to twotocook, our recipe structure deserves a little explanation. The idea behind twotocook was to design recipes for a fun game-like experience. The idea is you and your partner decide who will be chef 1 and who will be chef 2. Following your selection you will be brought to your individual instructions. We will start with a split grocery list for those that maybe want to split the shopping and come together for the meal. Then you will find the recipe steps are written per person rather than chronologically. For example, one person can chop vegetables while the other is sautéing onion. The idea is for the recipes to be structured so working together in the kitchen is a seamless experience (and fun too!). We have game-ified cooking from start to finish (including clean up duty!).

If you guys try out this activity please let us know in the comments your experience doing it! We would love to hear from our twotocook community.

For those of you that prefer a pdf of the recipe click the link below:

Step 1: Pick your role!

Alright it's time to start. Between the two of you decide who will be chef 1 and chef 2. It will be a surprise what tasks you will have to do and which lucky (or unlucky haha) winner will be on dishes tonight. Its all part of the fun!

Step 2: Grocery List

Step 3: Cooking

Thanks for making this recipe! We hope you enjoyed it and would love to hear your thoughts on our game-ified cooking adventure. Let us know in the comments.

Until next recipe!

- twotocook