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

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)

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

Pulse the hazelnuts using a food processor until they look sandy. Don’t overdo it; otherwise you’ll have hazelnut butter.
Combine the ground-up hazelnuts, all-purpose flour, icing sugar, and salt in a bowl.
Cut in the unsalted butter into the dry ingredients using a pastry blender (strongly recommended), two knives, or your hands.
Gradully add water until you have a soft but not too sticky dough.
Shape into a disk, cover with plastic wrap, and chill for at least an hour.
Once it’s time to make the crust, remove the dough from the fridge and leave it out at room temp until it’s soft enough to handle (10-20 minutes).
On a parchment paper, roll the dough into an 11 inch disk.
Carefully transfer the dough to your pie tin, trim or shape the pie crust so it’s even with the pie pan edge.
Line the pie crust with alumnimum foil. Fill the pan with your favourite pie weight (I use dried beans) and use the foil to cover all the edges.
Bake for 10-12 minutes on top of a metal sheet pan at 375 degrees.
Remove the pie weights and foil. Bake until the crust bottom is lightly brown (This took me about 15 minutes).
Let cool.

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

Chop your fruits if they are not small enough. Add them to a medium-large bowl.
Pour enough boiling water to submerge the fruits. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and steep for 15-20 min.
Drain the fruits.

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.
Remove from the heat and quickly whisk in the egg yolks.
Whisk in the butter until melted.
Whisk in the vanilla extract.
Let cool.

Separate your whites from the yolk.
Transfer the yolks to a medium bowl, add sugar, and whisk until you see a smooth.
Sift flour and cornstarch into the bowl before combining.
In a medium saucepan, heat milk on medium-low heat until it’s steaming. Remove from the burner.
Gradually add half of the milk to the egg mixture while whisking.
Place a mesh strainer on the pot of milk. Pour in the egg mixture to remove the cooked solids.
Turn the heat to medium low and keep whisking until the sauce starts to thicken.
Reduce the heat to low and whip the cream as hard as you can for 1-2 minutes.
Add vanilla extract.
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 bowl.
Keep stirring the custard until it is cool to touch.
Fold in the rehydrated fruits.
If not assembling the pie immediately, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate immediately.

These instructions assume you know what “soft peaks” and “stiff peaks” are. Read this article if these terms are new to you.