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It was Sunday and we’d stayed up stupendously late the night before watching England lose at rugby, going down the pub for post-match analysis, and then playing pencil and paper games with wine and beer and salty snacks, all of which meant that the nearly regular Sunday walk with pub treat was not an option. We had instead to make do with a reluctant visit to our newly refurbed local Sainsbury’s.

All the usual criticisms apply, with special reference to why have they bothered with a homewares/clothing/electrical goods/music area when the aisles are too narrow to allow for comfortable browsing if others have the audacity to have chosen a similar route to you. That and the choice/stock levels are so woefully low that you’d have to be seriously parochial to make this your destination shop for non-foodstuffs. And they appear to have actually made the food aisles narrower with some lines discontinued (tinned cherry tomatoes).

But I digress.

It also meant that a many tiered pudding could be embarked upon. And so it was decided that having never made a lemon meringue anything I should have a go, so here we have it in all its not difficult but reasonably time consuming glory.

Preparation time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 85 minutes
Skill level: Medium
Serves: 4

Ingredients

For the pastry:

• 100g plain flour
• 65g butter - chilled, cut into pieces
• 25g caster sugar
• 2 tablespoons beaten egg

For the filling:

• 3 large eggs
• 250g caster sugar
• 150ml double cream
• 4 tablespoons lemon juice
• zest of 1 lemon - finely grated
• 2 egg whites

For the pastry, put the flour and butter in a large bowl and rub together until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. Add the sugar and blend; pour in the beaten egg and mix together until you have a good dough. Roll into a ball and leave to chill in the bowl for 30 minutes before use.

Onto the tart. Preheat the oven to 200ºC/Gas 6. Roll out the pastry on a lightly floured surface; place in a lightly greased 20cm diameter loose-bottomed tin with a depth of 4cm. Prick the base and chill for 20 minutes.

Next, line the pastry with some lightly crumpled greaseproof paper and cover the paper with baking beans. Bake for 15 minutes; remove the paper and beans and bake again for 3 minutes. Set aside.

Reduce the oven temperature to 150ºC/Gas 2.

Now for the filling. Stir together the eggs, 150g of the sugar and the cream. Slowly stir in the lemon juice then strain into a jug and mix in the zest. Pour the contents of the jug into the pastry case and bake for 50 minutes. It should then be set. Leave to cool.

Turn the temperature up to 180ºC/Gas 4

Whisk the egg whites until stiff. Gradually beat in the remaining sugar for a creamy yet stiff meringue. Spread over the cooled tart being sure that it goes right up to the pastry edge with not a space to be seen. Make a nice swirly pattern with a knife then bake for 15 minutes until the meringue has browned very lightly. Serve hot or cold.

Verdict: Rather tasty. Pretty sweet, but then you expected that didn’t you?

Drink: Well it was still the weekend so a bottle of red Burgundy that we were drinking rather slowly throughout the meal.

Entertainment: The Stella Street feature length film on DVD. Excellent stuff. Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Al Pacino and Michael Caine being the house favourites. All very silly but just brilliantly put together.