Wedding Weekend

Mr VST and I were invited to a wedding this weekend in High Wycombe, it was of a friend of ours Big J and his lovely fiancée, now wife. We were fed fantastically well all weekend. At the reception we were greeted with fizz and canapés, including Yorkshire puddings with roast beef and horseradish sauce, I was gutted as I love a good Yorkshire but there were no meat free ones. The wedding breakfast was really tasty too. To start we had a vegetarian tart and salad, simple but tasty and then for the main we had the most delicious, creamy butternut squash risotto. There were speeches and then desert which was individual lemon meringue tarts with strawberries.

 Later in the evening there was a buffet, which I couldn't face but I had a bit of Mr VST's cheese and crackers! There was also wedding cake. The mother of the groom made the fruit cake (which was delicious) and the bride with a little help from the groom, iced it. As you can see it was beautiful.

Someone also made them this wonderful top table cake with each of the members of the wedding party made in icing.

We then got up this morning and had an amazing buffet breakfast with fruit, yoghurt and cereal followed by a fry up. After a short stroll there was lunch served at the bride's parents' house, another packed out buffet and then this evening I made a tomato and pasta bake, which Mr VST and I nibbled on but I really made it so that we would have some lunch tomorrow.

Lemon Meringue not Pies

In my quest for low calorie puddings to satisfy my sweet tooth I came across a supposed made over lemon meringue but when I added up the calories myself it wasn't that low calorie so I got to thinking about it and decided I would try a no pie lemon meringue. Having discussed the logistics with Mr VST we decided that individual portions were probably best. I had never made a normal lemon meringue pie before but my Mum used to make them all the time when I was a kid and they were always well received! I found the simplest recipe I could and followed it, all apart from the pie bit...

So I mixed the sugar, water, lemon juice and lemon zest together. Then the cornflour and water together which reminded me of the silly putty we used to make as kids. I was adding a tablespoon of water at a time to the cornflour and when I'd added about two it got to that amazing texture where if you tried mixing it hard it went solid and if you were gentle with it it would move - great stuff!


Anyway I then added the cornflour mix to the lemon mix and heated and mixed until it became amazing lemon curd. Then onto the meringue. The recipe said to use the rest of the sugar (75g) and add it to the whisked egg whites. The usual meringue recipe I used is 50g of sugar to one egg white. I decided to follow the recipe and spooned the meringue onto the slightly cooled lemon curd that I had shared between six ramekins and popped it all in the oven.

They took flippin ages to cook. I always forget how long meringues take to cook and making them after an evening trip to the supermarket for a massive stock up was a huge mistake. They took about 45 minutes in the oven and were of course then boiling hot and the lemon curd was completely melted. It was too late to wait for them to cool down to eat them so we ate them hot which wasn't great really!

They were nicer cold this evening but Mr VST still isn't a big fan. The lemon part is very lemony, like lemon curd and without the bland pastry it is too strong on its own for him. For me however it is fine :)