After a bit of research I combined a recipe from BBC Good Food online.. Lemon and Raspberry Meringue pie http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10881/lemon-and-raspberry-meringue-tart and Delia's fail safe meringue recipe http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/meringues.html
The recipe suggests one uses lemon curd, but I had some lime curd in that I'd only used a little of, so thought I'd change the lemon to lime (waste not want not!!!)
Ingredients (tweaked)
Filling
1 jar of lime curd (411g)
2 whole eggs and the 2 yolks from the egg white mixture
250g of fresh raspberries
Pastry bases
Meringue
3 Egg Whites
125g Caster Sugar
Topping
Raspberries from the punnet used in the filling
Zest of 1 lime
Method
So firstly, getting to grips with the pastry base. I used 8 ready made pastry cases on this occasion.. Purely again because I had them in stock to use.
I preheated the oven to 190 degrees and put the pie cases on a lined baking tray.
I scattered 6 raspberries on each of the 8 pastry cases, and got to work on the filling.
Firstly I prepared the egg whites for the meringue and used the egg yolk for the filling. With the egg yolks I added two whole eggs and beat them together.
I emptied the lime curd into a non stick sauce pan and added the beaten egg mixture together and put the mixture on a low heat to simmer for 10 minutes or so. I ensured I constantly stirred the mixture as advised to ensure the mixture thickened accordingly. It took a little longer than 10 minutes..about 15 minutes to thicken. But once thickened I decanted into a glass bowl and covered with cling film and left to cool (I left the mixture to cool whilst I got to work on the meringues and completed house chores, so a good 45 minutes at least!).
Whilst the mixture was cooling I got to work on the meringue. For this is opted for Delia Smith's classic, fail safe meringue recipe. I used the egg whites that I had separated earlier and added them to the 125g of caster sugar. I used my mixer to whisk the meringue to soft peaks. To check the meringue is ready I did the old trick of putting it over my head.. Thankfully a success as I had washed my hair!!
I left the meringue whilst I spooned about 2 tablespoons of the cooled lime curd mixture onto the raspberry and pastry cases. Once all the lime curd mixture sufficiently filled the cases I spooned on about 2 tablespoons of meringue onto the mixture and created soft peaks with the back of the spoon.
The pies were ready to go in the oven, so I put them in the oven for 10 minutes at 190 degrees and then turned the oven down to 150 degrees thereafter.
Once golden brown I turned the oven off and left the meringues in the oven until cooled as advised by Delia.
Once cooled, I sprinkled the lime zest and a raspberry on top for aesthetics rather than taste.
I cut into the pie, and it was the perfect meringue - slightly guey on the inside, with a perfect cracking on top.
Taste test - as I'm not the biggest meringue pie fan, I was again, the office feeder and took these into work.
The feedback - resounding success! Meringue cooked well - crispy on the outside and Slightly guey on the inside as i had tested. The taste combination of raspberry and lemon was apparently quite fresh and light, and the flavours complimented one another.
I would use this recipe again as it was easier than I had thought.. But I would probably play around with the flavour combinations.
