The second recipe is one of my favorite desserts… The meringue lemon pie! I could eat tons of it!

Last week-end I was invited at friends’ for dinner and I had to bring a French dessert and I was rather willing to make something a little more elaborated than a basic apple pie.

So I decided to try a modified version of my usual recipe. I had been dreaming about this cocoa/lemon combination for quite some time. Jasmine adds a nice flowery touch. This pie is extremely easy to make, still  the result is a pretty fancy.

Another very nice version that I tried a couple of months ago is with a lavender crust (do not add cocoa but instead some drops of lavender essential oil and almond powder instead of hazelnuts).

If you are hesistating between the two, just try them both. They are  awesome!

Cocoa and jasmine meringue lemon pie

Ingredients:
Cocoa/jasmine/hazelnut crust
250g flour (I used wholemeal flour) – 80 salted butter – 30g Dutch processed cocoa- 25g hazelnut powder – 1 egg – 40g confectioner sugar – 1 tbsp instant coffee – jasmine flavour

Lemon curd
4 organic lemons (juiced + 3 zested out of the 4) – 2 whole eggs and 2 yolks – 80g sugar – 30g cornstarch

Italian meringue
2 egg whites – 100g sugar – 40ml water

Directions:
Crust
Mix softened butter, cocoa, instant coffee and sugar with an electric mixer. Pour the egg with jasmin flavour and combine quickly. Then add flour and hazelnut powder. Mix with the electric mixer. The dough should form small bites. Do not over mix otherwise you will lose this “sandy” texture.

Form a ball with the dough and leave in the fridge.

After about an hour preheat oven to 180°C. Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out between a parchment paper sheet and a cling film. Fit loosely into a pie plate. Cut edge neatly all around. Prick bottom all over. Put some parchment paper on the bottom and spread some rice, semolina or dry lentils over it.
Bake for about 15 minutes then remove the parchment paper with the rice (or whatever you used) and bake for another 10-15 minutes. It is ready when the crust is no longer soft. Remove from the oven and let it cool down on a wire rack.

Lemon curd

In a saucepan combine the eggs and yolks, sugar, lemon juice, zests and cornstarch (dissolve it in a couple of tbsp of water). Mix well and bring it to boil. Cook for about 2 minutes while continuously stirring. Turn off the heat when thick enough.

Directly pour the lemon curd onto the pie crust. Let it cool down and then place in the fridge for at least 2 hours.

Italian meringue

Whisk 2 egg whites.

In the meantime prepare a sugar syrup by bringing to boil 100g sugar and 40ml water. When it reaches 120°C pour it on the whisked egg whites (they should have started to form some soft peaks – that’s the tricky part… the whisking and the syrup must be done in sync’). Keep whisking until egg whites are totally cold.

Spread the meringue over lemon curd. Brown the meringue with a kitchen torch.

Keep in the fridge until serving.

Enjoy