Lemon Meringue

Since starting this ELI I've asked a lot of people what their favorite type of pie is. I get some fairly typical answers: apple, cherry, blueberry. I get some different ones too: french ribbon, maple pecan. And then I get one answer that I have heard over and over again: lemon meringue. There's just something about this pie... And now that I've made it I see why. Lemon meringue is GOOD!

Now for some reason every time I make a pie I end up learning something. (Strange right?) Well my lesson from this pie came very early on in the pie making process. For this pie I ended up making the crust three times. It's a good thing that I was only making one pie because even with just making the one crust three times I used up quite a bit of butter. As you might recall I read an article that mentioned the idea of using a food processor to OVER PROCESS the butter and flour and then add in the rest of the flour... The idea sounded pretty solid on paper; so I decided to try it. I processed the butter and flour to just the right point, and then kept on going. I then proceeded to add the rest of the flour and the water and... Well then I tried rolling it out. It was one giant mess! It was just mush! Despite the fact that I had added some of the flour later (1/3 of the flour was added after the butter had been put in, just like the guy's recipe said) there still wasn't enough for the water to combine with to form gluten. So I pretty much had a ball of flour coated butter, and water... Doesn't work so well.

Eventually I gave up on that and decided to just go ahead and make a new crust. I used the food processor again (because it really does work quite well and GOODNESS it saves a lot of time!) and stopped when my butter was in pea sized chunks.

This pie crust would have been perfect! Except for one little fact... I'm used to making double crust pies, or two one crust pies... So I might have accidentally put twice the amount of water into this crust as I was supposed to. (With original over-processed crust I did actually put in the correct amount of water... Don't worry, that just didn't work.) So there goes my second crust out the window.

Well, if at first you don't succeed... try try again. I made a third pie crust. This time I was REALLY CAREFUL!!! And it turned out just right. Something neat about lemon meringue pie is that the crust has to be fully pre-baked. This pretty much means that I bake the crust... and then put the filling in (yeah, you don't oven bake the filling). I really like pre-baking pie crusts because then you can make sure that it's not soggy or anything! Another cool thing about it is that after a crust is fully baked you can actually take it completely out of the pan. Take a look:

Does that look gorgeous or what? So, moral of the story... Third time really is the charm! Moving on... it's time for the filling. Now there are two things that make a lemon meringue pie a lemon meringue pie... Can you guess what those two things might be? Well they're the lemon and the meringue of course! The lemon part comes first. I had never actually cooked a pie filling on the stove before; so this was (another) new experience for me. But before I could get to the fun of cooking on the stove I had a little bit of work to do... More zesting and juicing.

Fortunately I didn't need half as much zest or juice as the key lime pie required. Once I'd gotten that taken care of the fun began. You know, it's actually REALLY simple. All you have to do is mix the ingredients together and then cook them on the stove until the mixture thickens and begins to bubble. There were a few times when I though that the mixture might be thick enough, but once it started thickening there was no might. Once it begins to thicken and bubble you KNOW. It was pretty cool. My lemon filling went from this:

To this:

It's quite a difference. Well then the filling goes in the pie crust (which I put back in the pan) and then just sits in the refrigerator for two or three hours. Then (after all that waiting) the next super fun part comes into play. I have decided that meringue is one of my favorite things EVER. Not only is it ridiculously simple, it is DELICIOUS! All you do is thicken some cornstarch and water on the stove, and then it's just a bunch of mixing. The mixing bit was the coolest part because I got to use a hand-held mixer! I know that probably sounds like a silly thing to get excited about; but I haven't used a hand-held mixer since I was... I dunno... 6? It was a special moment for me. So special, I decided to share it with you:

It was fun. Well in the end you mix all that until it's nice and thick. (A lot of thickening goes on in this recipe.) Then... you put the meringue on the pie. Now if you think back to lemon meringue pies you might have seen in the past you'll remember that they all had little peaks. Well it turns out you make those by using the back of a spoon to lift the meringue into peaks. When that bit's done you have a lovely WHITE meringue:

And then you bake it for 15 minutes to get a lovely GOLDEN meringue:

I think I cooked mine a touch too long because it seems more brown than golden; but it still tasted amazing!

Now the sad thing about meringues is that they attract moisture. We (BreAnne Huber and I) let the pie sit for just an hour and when we came back the meringue had already shrunk. So, it is important that you serve a meringue the day you make it... Otherwise you might not have a very large meringue portion to your pie; and that's just not very attractive. Lessons for this pie: third time's a charm, lemon + meringue = lemon meringue pie, and don't let meringue sit around for very long! (Not that you would do the last one anyway. I mean who would let a delicious pie just sit around?!)