Meremere layered meringue pie

Meremere component recipes adapted from Del’s Cooking Twist (hazelnut crust), How Sweet Eats (orange curd), Cooking with Dog (pastry cream), and Sally’s Baking Addiction (meringue)

Makes enough for a 9" pie pan.

Ingredients

Hazelnut crust

  • 90 grams of whole hazelnuts
  • 160g all-purpose flour
  • 65g icing sugar
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 120g unsalted butter at room temperature
  • 30-45 mL water

Orange curd

  • 175 mL orange juice
  • 125 mL (100g) sugar
  • 40 mL (32g) corn or potato starch
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 2.5 mL vanilla extract
  • 2 tbsp unsalted butter
  • Zest from an orange (optional, but recommended if you’re not using orange peel in your dried fruit mix)

Pastry cream

  • 4 egg yolks
  • 73g granulated sugar
  • 11g all-purpose flour
  • 11g corn or potato starch
  • 333 mL whole milk
  • 7.5 mL pure vanilla extract

Dried fruits

  • 48g dried blueberries
  • 112g other dried fruits of your choosing (I used the fruit glacee mix, which has green cherries)

Lingonberry-cherry spread

  • 30 mL lingonberry jam
  • 7.5 mL syrup from marschino cherries

Steps

Hazelnut crust

  1. Pulse the hazelnuts using a food processor until they look sandy. Don’t overdo it; otherwise you’ll have hazelnut butter.
  2. Combine the ground-up hazelnuts, all-purpose flour, icing sugar, and salt in a bowl.
  3. Cut in the unsalted butter into the dry ingredients using a pastry blender (strongly recommended), two knives, or your hands.
  4. Gradully add water until you have a soft but not too sticky dough.
  5. Shape into a disk and chill for at least an hour.
  6. Once it’s time to make the crust, remove the dough from the fridge and leave it out until it’s soft enough to handle (10-20 minutes).
  7. Roll the dough into an 11 inch disk.
  8. Carefully transfer the dough to your pie tin, trim or shape the pie crust so it’s even with the pie pan edge.
  9. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 400 degrees.
  10. Let cool.

(This is not a recipe where you can use. A massive thank-you to Mira for pointing this out.)

Lingonberry-cherry spread

In a small bowl, combine the lingonberry jam and cherry syrup.

Dried fruits

  1. Chop your fruits if they are not small enough.
  2. Pour enough boiling water to submerge the fruits. Steep for 15-20 min.
  3. Drain the fruits.

Orange curd

  1. Whisk sugar, starch, salt, and orange juice in a saucepan over medium heat, until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is both bubbly and thickened.
  2. Remove from the heat and quickly whisk in the egg yolks.
  3. Whisk in the butter until melted.
  4. Whisk in the vanilla extract.
  5. Let cool.

Pie cream

  1. Separate your whites from the yolk.
  2. Transfer the yolks to a medium bowl, add sugar, and whisk until you see a smooth.
  3. Sift flour and cornstarch into the bowl before combining.
  4. Bring milk to a boil until it is steaming. Remove from the burner.
  5. Gradually add half of the milk to the egg mixture while whisking.
  6. Place a mesh strainer on the pot of milk. Pour in the egg mixture to remove the cooked solids.
  7. Turn the heat to medium low and keep whisking until the sauce starts to thicken.
  8. Reduce the heat to low and whip the cream as hard as you can for 1-2 minutes.
  9. Add vanilla extract.
  10. Fill a bowl with ice and cold water, before placing a clean bowl on top of that icy water bowl. This is your ice bath. Pour/spat the custard into this mixture.
  11. Keep stirring the custard until it is cool to touch.
  12. Fold in the rehydrated fruits.
  13. If not assembling the pie immediately, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate immediately.

Meringue

  1. Wipe a metal bowl and the beaters with vinegar or lemon juice.
  2. Add the egg whites.
  3. Whip the eggs to foamy. Add creme of tartar.
  4. Whip the eggs to soft peaks.
  5. Gradually add sugar while whipping the eggs to stiff peaks.

Putting it all together

  1. Spread orange curd on the floor of the pie crust.
  2. Spread the lingonberry-cherry spread on the orange curd.
  3. Pour the pastry cream over the orange curd.
  4. Spread meringue on the pastry cream, paying attention to seal the edges.
  5. Bake for 15-20 minutes at 350 degrees.
  6. Cool for 1 hour.
  7. Chill for at least 4 hours.

Notes

  • This dessert is best eaten within a day.