Strawberry Shortbread Meringue Pie

Posted by - Laura @ Laura loves cakes

Hurrah...it's officially the start of summer...British Strawberries have arrived...we might just have to ignore the recent weather though!! What could be better on a warm summer's evening than sitting in the garden with a glass of wine and one of these Strawberry Shortbread Meringue pies.

The recipe for these desserts specified to use shop bought shortbread which I would be more than happy to do but for this blog post I thought I'd add a bit more of a baking element and make the shortbread! The recipe I used is below but I perhaps found it a little crumbly...so you can either try the same recipe or how about this one from Delicious magazine...they also add a hint of Orange.

To make the base for these pies, it's a bit like a cheesecake, crumb up the shortbread and then add melted butter before pressing it into the tin. My only complaint about this recipe was that it was nigh on impossible to get the dessert off the base so in the end I had to resort to leaving on. To get round this problem, the recipe suggested making the baking paper for the base larger than needed. My other thought was to just use a food ring and leave the base as a whole circle of shortbread, baked in the shape for the purpose.

So once the base is chilled, it's just a case of cutting the strawberries in half and putting a circle around the edge. Inside of this goes whipped double cream with a little sugar, mint and crushed strawberrries. Then the finishing touch is to make a gorgeous Italian meringue which can be piped on to make dramatic peaks. The meringue is then browned off under the grill and voila! To make the meringue it does help to have a sugar thermometre but you can do without.

So the finished product is a dreamy desssert of shortbread, cream, strawberries and clouds of gorgeous Italian meringue...who could resist...certainly not me...I'm going to make this again next weekend!! :-)