Daring Bakers – Lemon meringue pie

This month’s Daring Baker’s challenge was lemon meringue pie, a challenge from The Canadian Baker.

I’m a bit feverish so I’ll keep this post a little short.

When I read the recipe I did have a few reservations about the crust and filling, both involved water. The recipe for the crust called for â…“ cup of water which seemed like a lot to me. I checked the recipe to see if it said something about adding water until it comes together but no such thing. So I just did exactly what the recipe said which resulted in a fairly wet and flexibel dough. After chilling it somewhat longer than the recipe suggested (½ hour instead of 20 minutes) it was manageable though. Not as manageable as Donna Hay’s shortcrust recipe that I usually use though. When I cut away the overhanging dough it looked pretty strange. Because of it being so wet and flexible I suspect it was more a combination of cutting and tearing (even though I used a sharp knife). I put it in the fridge and went grocery shopping so it chilled for over an hour instead of the suggested 30 minutes. After blind baking the crusts (I made two smaller ones and used springform baking tins) it turned out that the dough did not behave the way my usual dough behaves. One of the crusts kind of slided a bit down at two points. The other seemed ok but it did shrank in the sense that it went below the top of the springform. Nothing a little meringue couldn’t conceil 😉

The water in the lemon filling was my other reservation, it seemed like so much. Turned out the filling tasted really great, in fact it was delicious! The texture was great too. At least at this time I was sure the lemon meringue pie would be delicious.

It was fun to see how the water turned into thick wall paper adhesive. Had been afraid to add the corn flour directly into the water so I let the water cool down for a couple of more minutes. But it worked well…learned something here. I had to make the pie in steps so I chilled the filling and hoped for the best the next morning. It firmed up beautifully except, I needed it to be more liquid to fill the crusts. I microwaved it 20 seconds at a time, everytime whisking it until it was smooth. Took about 3 x 20 seconds and 1 x 10 seconds.

I filled the crusts and started whipping the meringue. Meringue is not something I make a lot and usually I make Swiss meringue (heating the sugar and egg whites before whipping them) and up till now that usually works well for me. The times that I made regular meringue I usually underwhipped it because I was afraid to overwhip it. This time I thought to myself that I wouldn’t let that happen…result: OVERwhipped meringue. I only noticed after I piped the meringue onto the pie, it looked more like whipped cream from a pressurized container. Still I didn’t really get it so I thought I’d just make it spiky with a palet knife….well, that doesn’t work with OVERwhipped meringue. It just looks ugly 😦 Oh well, sometimes that happens.

At least the slice of cake looked ok enough if you don’t look at the top too much. I had to be very careful cutting the (chilled) pie to not ruin the slice. The meringue kind of moved around on the filling and the crust was pretty hard (maybe I overworked the dough?)

Oh, and did I mention that the meringue wept? It wept.

Would I make it again? I would because it was delicious but I’d use a different crust…I think….but on the other hand, even after more than 24 hours it was still not soggy!

That’s it for this month’s challenge, can’t wait till the next 🙂 And now I’m going to bed…

Check out all the other Daring Bakers.

For the recipe check out The Canadian Baker.