Weeping lemon meringue pie?

[LemonRedwood]

I made a lemon meringue pie today, using this recipe.

It tasted beautiful (if I do say so myself) so I think fundamentally a keeper of a recipe. However, the lemon curd bit seemed to weep some liquid through the base and then more when it was cut. It wasn't that the lemon bit itself was liquid, it held its structure, but there was liquid coming from somewhere! It meant it had quite a soggy bottom (although my guest who like soggy pastry was quite pleased about this) and if I make it again I'd want the base to stay crisper.

Any ideas how I can tweak the recipe to stop this happening? I followed it exactly and the only thing I can think is that maybe the lemon curd bit was too warm when I poured it into the pastry. The recipe said to reheat it, but when I got to that bit mine was still quite hot so poured it in without reheating and now I'm thinking maybe it should have been cooler at that point.

Was it definitely the lemon filling that was weeping and not the meringue weeping through it? Meringue will weep if underbaked, overbaked, overworked or if the sugar hasn’t dissolved fully.

If it was actually the lemon filling which was weeping then I’d think it was potentially slightly over cooked and had started to split slightly (albeit possibly not visibly). How well baked was the pastry prior to filling? I find with lemon meringue that you can get away with a really good blind bake because the pastry just doesn’t cook too much more once you’re adding the next elements

I'm pretty certain it was the lemon as the liquid was lemony. Maybe it had split, although I thought the cornflour was there to stop that! Pastry was light brown after blind-baking. Will try baking it longer next time

And now I want lemon meringue pie I was reading some of the reviews of the recipe, as I will be giving it a go next weekend, and others have had the leaky lemony liquid. Someone suggested brushing the pastry base with egg white to seal it, others have said the mix needs to be heated and whisked for a really long time to really thicken and others have used caster sugar rather than golden caster sugar so when I make it I will do all those things and just see how it turns out. At least it was tasty so worth another attempt.

Your title made me laugh op,sorry! I am picturing a sobbing pie. But mylaughing has backfired and now I really fancy lemon meringue pie and we absolutely none in.

I've loads left, which is another advantage of this recipe cos that's supper sorted 😉