I love fruit curds and this homemade blackberry curd is particularly easy to make. This recipe uses it to make meringue pies, but if you fancy taking a shortcut then just buy a good quality lemon curd.

Ingredients

for the blackberry curd

200g blackberries

1 lemon – zest and juice

100g caster sugar

100g unsalted butter, cut into small chunks

3 eggs, gently whisked

1 egg yolk

for the pastry

90g plain flour

10g icing sugar

50g unsalted butter

few drops water

for the meringue

1 egg white

50g caster sugar

1 tbsp water

Method

1. Start with the blackberry curd. For this you need to pop the blackberries in a food processor and whizz up. Push the crushed blackberries through a sieve into a glass bowl.

2. Add the remaining blackberry curd ingredients to the blackberries. Place over a saucepan with a little simmering water in the bottom of it – it should be able to warm the glass bowl, but the water should not touch the glass bowl.

3. Heat until the mixture become thick, regularly whisking. You are looking for the curd to be the thickness of a pancake batter.

4. While the curd is thickening, make the pastry. Weigh the flour and sugar into a large bowl and rub the butter in. If the mixture is not coming together, add water to it a few drops at a time until it comes together. Roll out and use a cookie cutter to make circles and place these into a jam tart tin (you should be able to make 6-8 tarts). Place in the freezer to chill and turn the oven on to 200C/ fan 180C. Once the oven is warm, transfer the pastry in to the oven and cook for 10 minutes. Once cooked, remove from the oven and allow to cool.

5. For the meringue, put the sugar and water into a small saucepan and heat until you have a bubbling syrupy mixture. Whisk the egg white to stiff peaks and then pour in the syrup, continue to whisk to create glossy peaks.

6. To assemble the meringue pies, add a spoonful of blackberry curd into each pastry case and top with meringue – piping on for a smarter look.

7. To create a golden top, either use a blowtorch, or place under the grill. It only takes a few seconds under the grill so keep an eye on them – my first batch got rather burnt!

Enjoy!