I’m really pleased with my decision to join the Daring Bakers. Although it has only been 3 months since I joined, I managed to experiment with so many baking techniques which I have avoided in the past for fear of failure and inconvenience. My first challenge involved bread making from scratch, and that’s without a bread machine! In the second challenge, I had to make a genoise cake covered with coffee buttercream and decorated with marzipan mushrooms for the Yule Log. This month, the daring bakers were celebrating the arrival of the new year with lemon meringue pies!

Jen from the Canadian Baker was our hostess this month. I have to admit that I have never laid my hands and mouth on a lemon meringue pie. It’s not a very common dessert to find in local cafes and restaurants here in Singapore. Most of the other daring bakers were already experts with the LMP and have their own trusty recipe for it. However, it seems that a lot of them had problems with the lemon curd being too runny or with the meringue weeping for this recipe. I read all the advices given by the experts and ended up with a delicious LMP without any hurdles! The only small problem I had was a lemon curd that wasn’t as stiff as it should be, but it was still able to hold it’s shape and integrity when I bite through my little tartlets.

I started with a fun time making the pie crust. The feeling of rubbing the cold butter into the flour was rather nice, yes I know I’m weird.

The next step was to make the lemon curd. This called for special attention as overcooking the lemon and cornstarch mixture would cause the curd to loose its structure and go thin. Another advice given by the other bakers was to not let the curd cool before applying the egg white meringue on top. The hot lemon curd will help to cook the underside of the meringue and also prevent a layer of water from forming between the meringue and curd. With that in mind, I tried to multi-task by working on the curd AND meringue at the same time. I figured if I start with beating the egg whites while making the curd, I would have both the meringue and curd ready at the same time. This way, the curd will not have time to cool while the meringue is still being whipped up to firm peaks. This was where it got pretty wild, because I had to keep my hands and eyes coordinated between 3 places (the stove, the mixer and the working table). I’m glad it worked out well!

I decided to pipe my meringue onto the top of the curd instead of just piling it on top. I tried the conventional “swirl” and the “dollops”. My father commented that the dollops of meringue looked like lotus flowers haha… These darlings were then left in the oven to brown for about 12 minutes.

I also made some meringue curds in my ramekins using the leftover curd and meringue.

While I am unable compare my LMP with what it is supposed to taste like, my family and myself really enjoyed this very much! The spongey meringue and lemon curd was so light, it works great as a post-meal dessert. My fears of the meringue weeping and sweating in this humid weather was also gone as the meringue held itself pretty well!

Thank you for the great recipe Jen!