Vegan Lemon Meringue Pie

You'll need:

• a 22cm pie form, greased and lined with baking paper
• more baking paper
• ceramic baking beans
• an electric mixer
• rubber spatula
• whisk

Ingredients:

Crust (though I now often use the Shortbread Pie Crust from Vegan Pie In The Sky:
• 175 grams of flour
• 1 tbs sugar
• 1/4th tsp salt
• 50 grams unscented/refined coconut oil (cold)
• 10 ml apple cider vinegar combined with 50 ml ice cold water

Preheat the oven to 175°C. Mix the dry ingredients. Cut or rub the oil into the mixture. Add the water until you have a nice pliable dough. Roll it out, put it in your greased pie-tin lined with baking paper, prick with a fork, put in the freezer for an hour. Bake blind for 10 minutes, then 8 more without baking beans until the crust is dry and golden. Let it cool while you prepare the filling.

Filling:
• 150 to 160 grams of sugar
• 50 grams of cornstarch
• zest of 2 lemons
• 1/4th teaspoon curucma (for color)
• 125 ml freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 125 ml cold water
• 225 ml boiling water

Combine everything but the boiling water in a saucepan. Whisk until there are no more lumps. Then make sure the water is boiling, add it, whisk and turn on the heat. Switch from whisk to spatula. Once it becomes thicker it needs a little longer to make sure the curd will set. When all of the white from the cornstarch has turned transluscent you're done. Don't cook it too long, but rest assured: this curd is a lot less difficult than the recipes that feature egg. When you're done, take you pan off of the fire and keep whisking to prevent clumps or setting. Pour into the pie-crust. Let cool and transfer to the refrigirator.

Meringue:
• 80 grams no-egg
• 1/2 tsp agar
• pinch of salt
• 1/8th tsp vanilla seeds
• 200 ml water (ice cold as well)
• 80 grams powdered sugar
• 15 grams of granulated sugar

Preheat the oven again to 175°C again. Mix the agar, vanilla seeds and no-egg. Add ice cold water. Beat for 6-10 minutes on high with the electric mixer. It'll be very poofy and eggwhite-like. Then add the sugar bit by bit. Once all the sugar is incorporated, beat for 6-10 more minutes. Top the cooled pie with it, making sure to cover it all the way to the crust. You can use a pastry bag to pipe, but a spatula works just as well in my experience.
Bake for 20 minutes, until golden brown. If you have a blowtorch and want it a little more browned, have at it. Don't slice before it's completely cool and the filling has set, lest you end up with crumbly soggy trainwreck.

Coming to you from 2017: I'm here from 2017 to tell you that deconstructed pies are a bad idea. They're cute, but I've since improved vastly on the curd recipe, so what it's lost in structural integrity it has gained threefold in taste and mouthfeel. If you want something portable, make them layered in jars instead! I've also since made this with aquafaba meringue, which is a little more finicky but also tastes more like its traditional counterpart.

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