I made this guy as a thank you for a friend who loaned me their car so I could drive my cat to a distant vet appointment. The furry little tacker is fine, just deeply expensive, but I very rarely drive and when I came home I felt the kind of fractured and harrassed that demands a few hours in the kitchen futzing with butter.

My friend likes lemon, which is a good thing to like, and meringue, which is a terrible thing. I've never understood the appeal of meringues. They're either chalky and too sweet or marshmallowy and too sweet, but either way they seem to serve as little more than vehicle for sugar. I have a crazy sweet tooth, but meringue makes me feel like my teeth are rotting out of my face. Which is gross.

Which might explain why I kind of, ahem, borked the meringue on this one. The recipe is not to blame; in this case it is pure operator error. The recipe comes courtesy of a lazyweb tweet I posted, demanding a good lemon meringue tart recipe from the food blogging mafiosi. And, boy, did Team Pretty Bake deliver. The filling is superlative, it is hyperbole, is is silken and rich with the right amount of lemony pucker. It is properly puckery, it is, and I wanted to climb bodily into the bowl and stay there until summer came back again.

But the meringue? I half-assed it, to be honest. In retrospect I probably should have ignored the recipe, and beaten the egg whites to buxom stiff peaks rather than wimpy soft ones, because once I beat in the syrup the egg whites refused to get any stiffer.* I shrugged and poured it in a thin slick over the top of my beautiful tart anyway, and gave it a spell under the grill to brown it. It looked... okay? But I think a meringue-less version would have been better. If you decide you'd like to meringue the tart, I'd do what I've specified below, and double the amount of meringue ingredients, and beat the egg whites to proper stiff peaks.

One final note: this recipe likes you to use a food processor and a candy thermometer, but I'd argue neither are necessary. You can cut the butter into the flour for the pastry using a pastry blender or two knives, or just use your fingers to rub the butter in as you would with scones. The original recipe has you monitoring the temperature of the eggs with a candy thermometer, but I suspect this is for food safety reasons. Once the mixture is thick enough for the whisk to leave trails, and for a ribbon of mixture to sit on top of the rest for a minute after you lift the whisk up, I'd wager it's cooked properly. You might like to use a candy thermometer for the syrup for the meringue, or you could just eyeball it, waiting until all the sugar is dissolved and the syrup is bubbling briskly around the edges before you whisk it in to the egg whites.

* as the actress said to the bishop whoopsie matron etc.

Lemon Meringue Tart
Adapted from Team Pretty Bake. Serves 6-8

For pastry:
125g cold butter, cut into six pieces
1/2 cup icing sugar
1 1/2 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg + 1 egg yolk

Whisk together the sugar, flour and salt in a bowl, or pulse in the bowl of a food processor. Add the butter, and pulse until it resembles coarse oatmeal, or cut in with a pastry blender or two knives. Beat the egg and egg yolk lightly to break it up, then add it with the motor running, tablespoon by tablespoon, or fork it in, until clumps form and the mixture forms a solid-looking wad when you squeeze it. Turn it on to a counter and wodge it together with your hands until it forms a rough circle. Wrap tightly in plastic wrap, and set aside in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes. Just enough time to make the filling.

For filling:
1 cup sugar
Finely grated zest of 3 lemons
3/4 cup freshly squeezed, strained lemon juice (you may need up to 5 lemons to get this, but my 3 lemons were very juicy)
5 eggs
300g butter at room temperature, cut into small pieces

Put the sugar in a heatproof (metal or glass) mixing bowl along with the lemon zest. Rub the lemon zest into the sugar with your fingers, until it is well combined and the sugar is prettily tinted. Meanwhile, fill a small pan with water, about 1/4 to a 1/3 of the way full, and set it simmering over medium-low heat. Whisk the eggs and lemon juice into the bowl, then set it over the pan.

At this point you can clip on your candy thermometer on to the bowl if you're using one. You want the mixture to reach 80 degrees C, or until it becomes thick as I've described above. Honestly, the thermometer got in the way of the whisk, and I probably wouldn't use it again. Whisk the mixture continually. It will get a little foamy, and you will despair a little and wonder if it will ever thicken, but at that moment it will start to transform and you'll think wow, cooking really is a lesson in perserverence.  Once it's thick and luscious remove from heat and strain immediately into the bowl of a food processor, or into a second bowl.  You really do want to strain it in case there are any bits in there that might compromise the silken integrity of your lemon cream.

Set the motor running in your food processor and add the butter piece by piece. Alternatively, use a hand mixer to beat the mixture and add the butter piece by piece. Once the butter is combined decant into a small bowl and press a piece of plastic wrap on to the surface. Put in the fridge to cool.

At this point you'll want to make your tart shell. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C. Remove the dough from the fridge and place it between two sheets of baking paper. It is a very sticky dough, so you'll want to use baking paper.  Roll out to a circle big enough for your 23cm tart tin. Peel off one sheet of the paper, then use the remaining sheet to transfer it into the tart tin. Peel off the second sheet, then use your fingers to gently press the dough into the tin. Remove the excess with a rolling pin, then prick the bottom all over with the tines of a fork.

The recipe asks you to freeze the dough at this point for 30 minutes. I said nuts to that, and my shell shrunk a little, but not too much. So either pop your shell in the freezer for 30 minutes, or do as I did and immediately oil the shiny side of a sheet of aluminium foil, then press it, shiny side down, into your tart shell. Fill with dry beans, rice or pie weights, and bake for 30-40 minutes, until the shell is delicately golden. Remove the foil and weights, then return to the oven to crisp up for 10 minutes. Let cool on a rack. If you want to make the meringue, do it now.

Italian meringue
2 1/2 cups caster sugar
4 egg whites

Beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. A pinch of cream of tartar helps if you have it, but it's no issue if you don't.  Put the sugar in a heavy saucepan along with 1/2 cup of water. Cook over low heat, stirring continuously, until sugar dissolves, then increase heat to high and cook until a candy thermometer measures 115 degrees C, or until it bubbles vigorously around the edges. Pour into the egg whites in a thin stream, whisking continuously, then whisk for 5 more minutes.

To assemble the tart, give the cold lemon cream a good whisk, then pour into the tart shell. Mound the meringue on top. Give the whole thing a 4-5 minutes spell under a hot grill to brown the meringue a little. I reckon if I wanted to skip the meringue I'd sprinkle the top generously with white sugar, then give it a spell under the grill just to brown attractively. Serve immediately.