Sunday, April 17, 2011

Lemon meringue pie

Take one recipe from my great-grandmother, one foolproof pie crust recipe thanks to cooks illustrated and two moments of distraction, and voila - a very tasty, yet not quite perfect lemon meringue pie. 

When you look at the pictures you will notice that I have no pictures of cooking the custard, nor of whipping the meringue. As luck would have it the last of three eggs I was separating broke the yolk when it cracked, and that tiniest little bit of yolk landed in the whites. As my custard is needing stirring so it doesn't clump, I am frantically trying get the yolk out of the whites, but I know once it is there, my stiff peaks are doomed. So yes my meringue is a little flat, but it still tasted like marshmallows and no I did not have time to grab the camera during all of it and I was too ashamed to take a picture of the firm but not fluffy meringue.

And then there is the pie crust. Now my husband actually made the dough as I was bathing the kids (hence no pictures either), but please someone tell me the secret. I have yet to pre-bake a pie crust without it falling on itself. My unbaked crust turn out fantastic as long as I am using a recipe that doesn't call for pre-baked. I prick, I poke, I use weights, I use beans, I use parchment, I even used a huge bowl of water that came right up to the edge of the crust and still it fell in. 

Lastly, the beautiful shade of dark brown on the meringue. As I am standing in front of the oven talking to my husband I burnt the top of the pie. No, not like my sister's black cookie recipe where you leave the kitchen and forget you have something in the oven, I am standing there at the oven door, mitten on my hand telling my husband something and sniff, sniff, umm yeah smoke. It still tastes yummy, but it doesn't look as beautiful.

- Note for this recipe I substituted coconut milk for regular milk without any issues.

the recipes

the nicely chilled dough

mise en place

my sad eggs

note the small peaks

and the lovely shade of brown

And now I know why all the recipes made two pies

No comments:

Post a Comment