It’s citrus time where I live, which means that everyone has buckets of oranges, lemons, limes, and grapefruits that they can’t give away fast enough. I myself have an orange tree, but I’m often given lemons from friends and family as well–16-13: Lemon Meringue Pie is a good recipe to use up some of that winter citrus. You can also check out 15-29: Raspberry-Lemon Parfait or 17-42: Luscious Lemon Bars if you have a LOT of lemons to use up.
This is a NEW book recipe, so I never even knew until recently that Simply Delicious even had a lemon meringue pie recipe. If I had known, I guarantee I would have attempted it much earlier than now.
I LOVE lemon meringue pie–it conjures recipes of slowly rotating cake and pie displays in coffee shops. Man, do I miss eating in a restaurant.
In the blurb above, they mention that this version of lemon meringue pie is slightly different. I’m not sure what’s all that different about it other than they have a flattened top on it, which takes away one of the best parts (and defining features) of the whole thing.
Ingredients. Lemons are from a local tree, as described above.
I have a pastry blender somewhere, but I decided to just try to do it with a whisk instead–this did not go well.
Rater than use the suggested pastry blender, I decided to switch to the stand mixer–not the ideal tool, but I didn’t want to drag out the food processor too.
The stand mixer did well enough, now we’ll skip ahead to fitting the chilled dough into the pan. I made individual tart pies instead of one big pie–maybe that helps makes it different from other lemon meringue pies.
After pre-baking (blind baking) the crusts. Not very dark, but that’s okay–we don’t want them to be over done. We’ll put these to the side while I now work on the filling.
Mixing in the cornstarch–the rest has already been mixed.
Separating the eggs.
Egg yolks go into the filling.
Sous chef helps by grating lemon peel for me while I work.
Stirring in the lemon peel and butter.
Crusts filled and ready to bake.
While the pies bake, I’ll work on the meringue.
Extremely stiff peaks.
I had enough meringue to make the more traditional mounds on top, so I went with it (despite their instructions to smooth it flat).
After baking. Looks like meringue to me.
Here’s a little lemon meringue pie for you–makes enough for 2 to share or one to thoroughly enjoy.
Final picture, with an inside view. These were actually very good, and the little size was actually a fun change–I guess these ended up different than most lemon meringue pies after all.
Grade: A
