This vegan lemon meringue pie my friends is as good as the real deal. It features a flaky buttermilk pie crust, intensely zingy and flavored lemon curd, and silky vegan Italian meringue which makes the perfect meringue for pie topping.
I've recently improved the recipe based on reader feedback and am convinced it is the best vegan lemon meringue pie recipe you will try! I've simplified the instructions and it's now made without agar-agar.
If you're looking for a slightly healthier take on lemon pie, check out the no-bake lemon meringue pie from my cookbook.
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📖 Recipe Overview
- Mouth-Puckeringly Zesty - This recipe uses a high ratio of both fresh lemon juice and zest, which are blended into the filling for maximum flavor. The tangy acidity of the lemon filling helps to cut through the sweetness of the meringue topping.
- Perfect Make-Ahead Dessert - It may seem like there are a few elements to this recipe, but some can be prepped ahead of time. Make the pie crust up to 2-3 days ahead and store it in the fridge until the day before serving.
- Great For Special Occasions - This vegan lemon pie is an absolute showstopper of a dessert. It makes the perfect finale for Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner, as well as a lovely Mother's Day or Easter brunch treat.
Love vegan lemon desserts? Try my vegan recipes for Lemon Cake, Mini Lemon Tarts, Lemon Loaf Cake, Limoncello Tiramisu, and Lemon Cheesecake next!
🧾 Ingredients Needed
You only need around 10 ingredients to make this homemade lemon meringue pie. The homemade pie crust can be made a couple of days ahead to save time. Here's what to grab:
Ingredient Notes
- Fresh Lemons - Please do not use bottled lemon juice, not only will the flavor be off but it can inhibit the recipe from setting properly. fresh lemon juice and grated lemon zest are the way to go. Use unwaxed lemons, organic if possible. Waxed fruits are generally not vegan due to their coating.
- Aquafaba - This is the egg white replacer and the main ingredient for the eggless meringue topping. It becomes light and foamy when air is incorporated, just like egg whites.
- Cornflour/Cornstarch - This is a thickening agent that replaces the function of egg yolks in lemon curd.
- Vegan Butter - As well as adding a lovely rich and silky mouthfeel and buttery flavor, this also helps to set the lemon filling. Since we're making this without agar, the filling relies solely on cornstarch and butter to set it. Make sure you use block-style (buttery sticks), not spreadable margarine from a tub.
- Ground Turmeric - This is optional but I recommend adding a pinch for a vibrant yellow hue. Don't worry - you won't taste it! Turmeric makes a wonderful natural alternative to artificial yellow food coloring.
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🥣 How To Make Vegan Lemon Meringue Pie
Find the complete list of ingredients, quantities, and instructions in the recipe card at the end of this post.
Step 1: Prepare a batch of vegan pie crust and roll it out to around ⅛" thick. Lightly grease and flour the tin and gently press the dough into the base and sides. Pierce several holes into the base of the pastry using a fork.
Step 2: Add a round of crunched-up parchment paper and fill the base with pie weights. You can also use rice, dried beans, or flour as a pastry weight. Par-bake it for 20 minutes.
Step 3: Carefully remove the baking beads and parchment and continue to bake the crust for 15-20 minutes until golden brown. Cool completely to room temperature.
Step 4: Add the lemon juice, lemon zest, non-dairy milk, sugar, cornstarch, and sea salt to a high-speed blender. Blitz until smooth.
Step 5: Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and cook over medium heat for around 5 minutes, whilst stirring continuously. The mixture is ready when it is thick and coats the back of your spatula.
Step 6: Add cubed butter to a large mixing bowl and sift the curd mixture on top. Whisk until fully combined and the mixture is smooth and silky.
Step 7: Let the filling cool for around 20-30 minutes, and whisk it every 5 minutes or so to prevent a skin from forming. Then pour the curd into the cooled pastry shell and refrigerate until set.
Step 8: Meanwhile, prepare the meringue topping and spoon it over the set lemon pie. Torch the topping before serving and it will caramelize for a slightly toasted marshmallow flavor.
🍋 Variations
Although I feel this vegan lemon meringue pie is perfect as written, here are some ideas if you want to put your own spin on it:
- Mini lemon meringue pies - Divide the recipe into mini tart tins and create smaller hand pies. Bear in mind that the baking time will be less. So keep a close eye on the pastries and check them after the first 15 minutes of blind baking, then bake further until golden brown.
- Lemon passion fruit meringue pie - Swap out half of the fresh lemon juice for passion fruit juice to create a fun tropical twist on this classic pie recipe.
- Gluten-free lemon meringue pie - Swap out the plain flour for all-purpose gluten-free flour.
- Coconut topping - If you want to skip the Italian meringue topping you could try some whipped coconut cream in its place.
Or, if you are a cheesecake lover, try my vegan lemon meringue cheesecake instead.
📝 Recipe Tips
Roll, zest, then juice. Firmly rolling your lemon on the countertop for 10-15 seconds will help to release all the juice inside. When zesting, remove only the top, bright yellow layer - the white pith is quite bitter.
Adjust the acidity. If you don't like the sour lemon flavor, you can swap part of the lemon juice for extra non-dairy milk, and use less lemon zest.
Reduce the aquafaba ahead of time. This increases the potency of the chickpea brine and makes the consistency a closer match to egg whites. You can do this a day or two ahead if you want, but at least an hour ahead so it has time to cool.
Blind-bake the crust. This is an important step when your pie filling is unbaked and helps to avoid a soggy or uneven crust. It involves baking the crust with weighted parchment paper until it is half-baked. Then the crust continues baking without baking weights until fully browned. Thekitchen has a great post that goes into detail on when and how to blind-bake pastry.
💬 FAQs
At room temperature, you can keep this lemon pie out for a few hours or the day of serving it. Otherwise, store it in an airtight container in the fridge. For best results, the meringue topping will hold in the fridge for up to 2-3 days.
As another option, you can prepare the pie crust and curd filling a few days in advance and top with the meringue on the day of serving.
You can freeze it, but I recommend freezing the pie without the topping. The meringue can become weepy when it defrosts and won't be as perfect as when it's freshly whipped!
Not usually. Traditional lemon meringue pie recipes are loaded with eggs and dairy, from the butter-based pastry to the egg yolk curd and meringue that uses egg whites.
This version is made without eggs, dairy, or gelatin and is suitable for all eaters.
Yes! You can use GF all-purpose flour (such as King Arthur measure for measure) to make the pie crust, as some other readers have already reported it works wonderfully.
🥧 More Vegan Pies
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This recipe was originally posted in October 2021. It has since been modified and improved to simplify ingredients and instructions.
📖 Recipe
Vegan Lemon Meringue Pie
Equipment
Ingredients
- 1 batch vegan pie crust *makes extra dough - see note 1
Lemon Filling
- 3 tablespoons lemon zest *see note 2
- 250 ml (1 cup + 1 tsp) lemon juice freshly squeezed *see note 2
- 300 ml (1 ¼ cups) soy milk or almond milk or oat milk
- 300 g (1 ½ cups) granulated sugar
- 50 g (6 ¼ tbsp) cornstarch cornflour
- ¼ teaspoon sea salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground turmeric optional *see note 3
- 100 g (3.53 oz) vegan butter cold and cubed *see note 4
Meringue Topping
- 1 batch vegan Italian meringue
Instructions
- Preparation (up to 2 days in advance): Prepare the pie crust dough and chill until ready to use. Reduce the aquafaba for the meringue topping and refrigerate until ready to use.
- Preparation (Day of or day ahead of serving): Lightly grease a 9-inch pie tin with oil or vegan butter, dust it with flour, and then knock off any excess flour so it is lightly coated. You can also add a round of parchment to the base.Preheat your oven to fan 190°C/374°F or conventional 210°C/410°F. Also, preheat an aluminum tray or baking sheet in the oven.
- Pie Crust: Using a rolling pin, roll out the chilled dough to ⅛-inch in thickness so that it is an inch or so larger than the circumference of the tart tin. Use the rolling pin to carefully lift the pastry over the tin and use your fingers to gently ease the pastry into the side of the tin. Use a knife or pastry scissors to cut around the edges, then gently press the edges down with a fork. Pierce several holes into the base of the pastry using a fork.
- Take a sheet of parchment paper and cut it into a circle slightly larger than the pie tin. Scrunch up the parchment, and place it on top of the dough. Fill the base with pie weights (you can also use dried beans, rice, or lentils). Par-bake it for 20 minutes.
- Carefully remove the baking beads and parchment and continue to bake the crust for another 15-20 minutes until golden brown. Cool completely to room temperature, but do not remove the crust from the tin.
- Lemon filling: Add the lemon zest, lemon juice, soy milk, sugar, cornstarch, salt, and turmeric if using, to a high-speed blender and blitz until smooth. Transfer the mixture to a saucepan and cook over medium heat for around 5 minutes, whilst stirring continuously. The mixture is ready when it is thick and coats the back of your spatula. Remove from the heat.
- Add the cold cubed butter to a large mixing bowl and pour the warm lemon curd on top. Whisk until fully combined and the mixture is smooth and silky.
- Let the filling cool for around 20-30 minutes, and whisk it every 5 minutes or so to prevent a skin from forming on the surface. Then pour the curd into the cooled pastry shell and refrigerate for at least 4 hours or until set (preferably overnight).
- Topping: Prepare the meringue topping and spoon it over the set lemon pie. Torch the topping before serving using a blow torch.
- Storage: Place in an airtight container in the fridge. For best results, the meringue topping will hold in the fridge for up to 2-3 days. As another option, you can prepare the filled pie a few days in advance and top with the meringue on the day of serving.
Notes
- Pie Crust - The pie will use about ¾ of the pie crust recipe, you can make a full batch and freeze the remaining crust for other recipes or adjust the quantity to make less.
- Lemons - I used zest of 3 small lemons and juice from 7 small lemons (organic and unwaxed). Roll the lemons on the countertop, zest, and then juice the lemons. When zesting, remove only the top, bright yellow layer - the white pith is quite bitter.
- Ground Turmeric - This is optional but I recommend adding a pinch for a vibrant yellow hue. Don't worry - you won't taste it!
- Vegan Butter - Use vegan block-style butter, not spreadable margarine from a tub.
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I've made this 3 times in the past couple of weeks and it's really a perfect dessert. We try to avoid a lot of sugar so I've been able to reduce the sugar to 100g and sub another 100g with allulose. This is plenty sweet enough for us, especially with the meringue topping. I accidentally forgot the butter the first time I made it and we didn't even notice so I've just continued to leave that out. Thank you for the inspiration!! And, my 80 year old father that LOVES lemon pie is especially thankful for this vegan version.
Hi Tammy,
Thank you so much for sharing your experience and your lovely review! I'm so happy to hear that your father enjoyed it too! Appreciate you 🙂
Embarked on this knowing how labor-intense lemon meringue pie is. Took me three days but the outcome is delicious! The filling firmed up great. I weighed the corn starch. It's very tart, might add less zest next time. The meringue deflated a bit and is runnier than I hoped but I am not a very experienced vegan meringue / aquafaba handler.
Hi Marja,
Thank you so much for your feedback! It definitely is on the tarter side, so reducing the zest is a great idea for the next time if you prefer it less tart. May I ask, did the meringue deflate after some time or did you make it at the last minute?
Delicious! I baked my own favorite pie crust. I then followed your recipe for the lemon filling. Thank you for sharing this recipe.
Thanks so much for trying the recipe and for your feedback Candice!
Sounds delicious, but soy is a common allergen, and I am allergic to soy, chickpeas, etc.
Can I sub “normal” milk, i.e. dairy? Or oat? And what is vegan butter? What are the ingredients?
Thank you for a great lemon pie recipe, but vegan recipes often include common allergens.
Hi Monica,
Yes you can use oat milk. For the vegan butter, it depends on the brand is available to you, I personally use "Naturli block" and "Violife plant butter", both are soy-free but I would recommend checking them online to see in case there's anything you can't have in there. I hope this helps.
Hi. If we do not have vegan butter, what else can we use?
Hi Bis!
I´m afraid it´s needed for this particular recipe
This pie was phenomenal! I am not a baker but I followed your directions and the result was a beautiful and delicious fully vegan lemon meringue pie. I had 1 slice remaining after my non- veg family left on Easter. I’m so ready to use my leftover dough to try the chocolate cream pie next.
Hi Michelle,
That's wonderful! Thank you so much for taking the time to leave a review 🙂
Made this for Christmas dessert and it was fantastic. Lemon curd filling was perfect. I was skeptical of the turmeric initially, but the the final color was perfect and there was no taste of turmeric at all. This was my first attempt at aquafaba meringue.
Instructions were clear and easy. It tasted like the most amazing marshmallow straight out of the bowl and and easy to pipe. We don't have a torch, but were able to brown the pie lightly under the broiler (far from the burner). Thanks for a great recipe!
Hi Sarah,
This is wonderful to hear, thank you for choosing to include it on your Christmas table! I hear you about the turmeric, I'm always so careful with the amount I add as I fear the taste coming through but a little goes such a long way with the color.
I love that you were able to brown it under the broiler as well. Thank you so much for your detailed review!
Hi there
Wanted to know how to prevent the lemon curd from splitting. As soon as I added the lemon juice to the soy milk , the milk split .How can I prevent this ?
Hi Vineeta,
It shouldn't curdle as long as its being stirred and cooked at the same time, even if it appears to curdle, it should come together in the end. Can I ask if it ended up working out for you?
Hi! Will this filling be okay to use with a premade/prebaked graham cracker pie crust?
Hi Sandra,
Yes absolutely 🙂
Hi
I made these yesterday and they are delicious. The problem I had was all the mini tarts I made left the sides of the crust after I took them out from the fridge after 4 hours.Can you help me understand what could go wrong here ?
Also the milk after adding the lemon juice starts to split . Is this what it’s supposed to do?
Hi Vineeta,
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. About the crust, could you clarify do you mean that the crust stuck to the pan? Also, did your curd end up smooth or stay split?
Hi
I made these yesterday and they are delicious. The problem I had was all the mini tarts I made left the sides of the crust after I took them out from the fridge after 4 hours.Can you help me understand what could go wrong here ?
Hi
Can the base and lemon curd be frozen. The meringue be then made later when required
Hi Vineeta,
I think that should work fine. Just defrost it slowly in the fridge overnight, and make sure to blot off any moisture before adding the topping.
Made this recipe and the crust needed more liquid and the lemon was very runny and didn’t set
Hi Jo,
Did you measure the ingredients with a scale or cups?
Hi 🙂 I love your recipe! Do you think coconut oil would work instead of vegan butter? Thanks 🙂
Hi Avi,
Thank you so much! I personally haven't tried coconut oil and would not recommend it for this particular recipe. The vegan butter gives a beautiful color to the lemon curd and it also mimics the flavor of standard butter, coconut oil may be a little overpowering! i hope this helps.
Hi, just tried it but it looks like after 4 hours the pie hasn’t set enough. I did as the recipe says. Can you help me figure out what has gone wrong? Do I need leave it longer in the fridge?
Hi Itay,
So long as the measurements were correct and you cooked out the cornflour for a few minutes, it will set. Just leave it in the fridge for a couple more hours. If you feel like the measurements may have been incorrect, or that it wasn't cooked out long enough, you may need to scoop out the filling and adjust/cook it out more. Hope this helps!
Thank you for the great recipe. It tastes amazing and was easy to make. My meringue was very stiff, however it gets less stiff after a couple of hours (the peaks merge). How can I prevent this?
Hi Johanna,
I'm happy to hear that you loved the recipe! Thanks so much for the feedback. Did you have the tart stored in the fridge during that time?
Is there something that could work besides corn starch? arrowroot?
Hi Michelle,
Arrowroot should be fine to use, but I haven't personally tested it so I can't say for certain if the exact amount will yield the same consistency.
You do amazing things I want to learn just like you and you will keep doing this work
Made mini individual tarts. Everyone loved them. So tasty. Defo make again
I saw your tarts on Instagram Nathan, they looked incredible! Thank you so much as always for your amazing feedback, much appreciated.
This was so yummy and easy to follow. It barely lasted until the end of the day!
Awh so happy to hear that! It never lasts long in this house either 🙂