Monday, August 17, 2009

Redcurrant Meringue Pie



What do you usually do with redcurrants? I always make some redcurrant jelly, and redcurrant juice makes excellent cordial. But there aren't too many redcurrant cake recipes in my cake repertoire, I must admit. I had a recipe for a redcurrant meringue pie that I had picked up several years ago from one of the supermarket recipe stands (Selver, in this case). Several readers of my Estonian site had praised it, but I didn't get around to making it until last week. As usual, I changed some quantities and tweaked the procedure, and was very pleased with the resulting meringue pie. The ruby redcurrants add a lovely spark, the sweet meringue and the slightly sour filling are an excellent match as well.

Redcurrant Meringue Pie
(Beseekattega punasesõstrakook)

Serves 6 to 8



Pastry:
130 g plain/all-purpose flour (250 ml/1 cup)
30 g oats (100 ml)
2 Tbsp sugar
125 cold butter, cut into cubes
2 Tbsp cold water

Filling:
250 g sour cream
3 Tbsp caster sugar
grated zest of half a lemon
150 g redcurrants, cleaned (1 cup)
1 Tbsp potato starch or cornflour

Meringue topping:
2 large egg whites
85 g caster sugar (100 ml)

Pastry: mix the dry ingredients, add cubed butter and pulse couple of times, until the mixture is fine and crumbly. Add the water, pulse again briefly. Press the mixture into a dough, then use your fingers and press the dought into a 26 cm pie dish.
Place to rest in a fridge for 30 minutes, then blind bake at 200 C for 15 minutes.
Reduce the heat to 175 Celsius.
Mix sour cream, sugar and grated lemon zest, spread on pre-baked pie base.
Gently mix potato starch/cornflour with the cleaned redcurrants and sprinkle on top of the cream layer.
Whisk egg whites and sugar until thick and white, then spread over the filling (or, for an even prettier effect, use a piping bag).
Bake at 175 C oven for about 15 minutes, until the meringue is light golden brown.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hello from Latvia! I'm posting for the first time, but have already tried several of your recipes - they all turned out great. Not to mention the joy to see that many good, "old" Estonian recipes are the same or almost the same we use here, next door.
This pie sound great too, and I will definetely try the recipe. By the way, I also had problems with finding use for redcurrant other than making jelly, until I discovered how good and fresh they are in all sorts of chicken salad. Now I freeze some amount every year just for this purpose - to use them in salad.

Ilze

Heatherfeather said...

This looks great. I think it looks delicious.

Denise | Chez Danisse said...

This looks wonderful! I don't think I've ever tasted a redcurrant. This must change...soon.

Anne said...

That looks great! I have a big bag of redcurrants in the freezer... they've been there for very long though. I do like making jam with half redcurrants, half raspberries - maybe I should do that. Then again, I don't eat that much jam. :)

Victor Chisholm said...

Yummy, this looks delicious.

Another idea for redcurrants: mix into vanilla custard for a lovely contrast of smooth/mild/sweet/creamy with sharp/zingy/texture.

Grace Ediza Virlouvet said...

Looks great!!!

Anonymous said...

Beautiful!

Trig said...

You are definitely up for a prize for food blog seasonality. Cherry, fava bean, chanterelles, carrots and redcurrants. Great stuff.

Tiina said...

Redcurrants, blackcurrants, whitecurrants -I tend to eat them before I have the opportunity to use them in cooking or baking. :) The pie looks delicious!

Greetings,
Tiina

Mel P. said...

Hi there from Germany! There's a similar cake called "Träublestorte" in the region of Stuttgart, it's just a simple pie crust filled with a 50/50 mix of currants and meringue and then topped with more meringue (made from 4-5 egg whites).
But yours also sounds delicious!

Cowango Studios said...

How funny! I made something called Vanishing Blueberry Pie this week that was essentially the same recipe sans the meringue and blueberries instead of red currants. Very yummy! My recipe was from a southern (US) cookbook from the Jackson, MI Junior League. So just proves that cooks think alike the world over.
Stefanie

Susan D said...

Pille, my tired eyes read the title of your post as "Reluctant Meringue Pie" (!?) and only after reading some of the text did I realize what the real topic was. I do however wonder, what would a reluctant meringue pie look and taste like?

bathmate said...

thank you for your nice posting


Bathmate

Unknown said...

I made it according to your original recipe at first. I loved the look of the cake and it was light and bursting with sweet and sour, perfect after a heavy Estonian winter meal. I wanted to spice it up a little the second (ok, fourth) time around so I tried it with a gingerbread crust (200g crushed home made gingerbread cookies but regular ginger snaps in the US should work just as well, 100g butter, melted, 10 min at 175C before adding the filling) and half of the sour cream substituted with condensed milk. Added some lemon zest and vanilla to the meringue as well. The flavors are much more intense and Christmasy but the sour redcurrant balanced everything out well, I thought. Thank you for the delicious ideas, Pille, and have a happy end of the year!
Mari-Liis (usually from New York but from Viimsi for the holidays :) )