Very Easy Lemon Meringue Pie

I usually don't post recipes in the blog. Although I have to cook everyday for a family of four, most of the food is of the quick and easy variety and not post-worthy. We do try to live healthy, so fast food or take away are limited to no more than once a week (if any) and we rarely have sweet deserts, just fruit.

On Saturday, however, we visited my grandfather's house and one of the neighbors gave us a bag of freshly picked lemons, so when I came back home I decided it was time for some lemon meringue pie.

Along the years I have tried, modified and tested again several recipes until I ended up with what I call my "very easy lemon meringue pie". It uses less ingredients than most other recipes and comes together in 15 minutes + 25 minutes of oven time overall, so you can have a fantastic desert ready in less than an hour. So, while I was making it I decided to take some pictures and share.

If you want to try it, here are the ingredients:

• 300 grams of cookies (any kind of sweet cookies will do: butter cookies, whole wheat, etc, as long as they not too strongly flavored, so I would leave out chocolate cookies for example)
• 200 grams of butter (use vegetable margarine if you prefer, it works well too)
• 1 can of condensed milk
• 2 eggs
• 50 grams of sugar (optional)
• lemon juice (one or two lemons, depending on size and juice content)

Step 1: 
Put the cookies inside a plastic bag and smash them (the plastic bag is optional but helps contain the mess). Or, if you are lazy like me, run them through the food processor until you have cookie dust.
In the meantime, melt the butter (I use the microwave).
Mix the smashed cookies with the melted butter and spread the mixture over a pie mold. It should look like this:

(note: the mixture will not be sticky and will crumb, so be gentle while spreading it)
Put the pie mold in the freezer for ten minutes.

Step 2: 
While the mold is in the freezer, mix the condensed milk with the lemon juice and the egg yolks. Save the egg whites for later. In the meantime, pre-heat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius (sorry, work with the European metric system and I'm down with the flu today so my brain is unable to make the appropriate conversions, but you can easily do it online if you need).


Step 3: 
Remove the pie mold from the freezer, pour the mixture over the pie crust and put in the oven. Let it bake for 20 minutes.

Step 4: 
If you want, add the sugar to the egg whites and mix them vigorously until they rise. Like I said, sugar is optional. Since condensed milk is already very sweet, I usually skip the sugar. When the pie is ready, remove it from the oven and spread the meringue over it.

Step 5:
Put it the oven for another 5 minutes and you're done!

Ok, so I'm not very talented when it comes to spreading the meringue, but I assure you it tastes great anyway. In the Summer I like to eat this pie very cold, almost like an ice cream, but in the Winter sometimes I put the slices in the microwave and eat them warm.





In addition to being quick (it took me longer to write this text than to actually make the pie), you can very easily make a light version of it, which is (almost) guilt free. For the light version, use low fat cookies, vegetable margarine instead of butter, light condensed milk and skip the sugar in the meringue. The taste is the same with a lot less sugar and fat.

Enjoy,