Cheating at lemon meringue pies

I'm a dirty rotten cheater. The smugness I feel about these little pies is hugely disproportionate to the effort involved. But when they came out of the oven, covered in billowing ivory meringue, I grinned like a maniac. So if you fancy feeling like Nigella, but can't be bothered with the effort, may I suggest these beauties?

You will need:
Melted butter
Six sheets of filo pastry
Some lemon curd
Two eggs
100 grams of caster sugar

See how easy this is? The only thing I made myself is the meringue.

I start by putting on the oven, at 180 degrees c. The recipe says to put it at 160 for a fan oven, which mine claims to be, but I know from experience how rubbish it is.

I plop some butter in a pan to melt, probably using about 50 grams. Once it softens into a golden liquid, I paint it all over a fairy cake tray. Then I get a sheet of filo pastry and cut it up into twelve little squares. I take one square, brush it with butter, and stick another on top. I keep doing this till I've got a stack of six little buttery squares of pastry, one on top of the other. I fan out the edges so that none of the corners are in the same place, so that it gets a cute little crinkly look when it's baked. Then I do the same thing with the other six squares. Then I do it all over again with the other sheets. It sounds boring, but there's something quite relaxing about cutting, brushing and layering. In my head, I'm a methodical French pâtissiere.


Once all my little stacks are made, I put them into the dents in the fairy cake tray, prodding them in gently with my thumb. Then I turn my attention to the filling, which is ridiculously easy. I just separate my eggs, fresh from our chickens Karen and Doris, and mix the yolks with some lemon curd. I probably use about 200g. Then I dollop the curd into the pastry cases, so that they look like a tray full of daisies.

Finally, it's on to the bit that I'm scared of. I've tried to make meringue several times, and it's never ever worked. I can't seem to get the meringue to hold its shape, and become that thick glossy stuff that I wish it could be. It ends up almost liquid, and splats onto the tray. So this time, I'm holding my breath.

I take my electric beater, and start whisking up the egg whites. They soon become fluffy and thicker, but I don't know what the 'stiff peaks' that everyone talks about actually look like, seeing as I've never achieved it. Eventually, I remember that on The Great British Bake Off, one contestant held her eggwhites over her head to check them. I upend the bowl. I'm almost certain I'll be showered in eggy snow, but amazingly they stay. I add the sugar, one spoonful at a time. When it's all beaten in and I can see that my meringue has finally, finally worked, I jump around the kitchen for joy.

It's simple now to spoon a little dollop of meringue onto each tart. I'm sure you could pipe them out and they'd look neater, but I quite like the homely effect. And I don't have a piping bag. Then into the oven they go, for twelve minutes.

And here they are, perfect and oh-so-fragile. They're too beautiful to survive long: a sudden loud noise makes me jump and I crush one. But it still tastes amazing in its crumbled state, sweet and tart and soft and crunchy all at the same time. One happy baker, and hopefully a whole happy family when we have these for pudding tonight.