Lemon Meringue Pie

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

I'm such a sucker for citrus.

I drown my pasta in lemon juice.  I adore lime-soaked chicken that's been thrown on the grill.  And citrusy desserts? Forget about it.

On Friday night, aka Date Night, we stopped at a diner for dessert before going home.  There were about a million desserts to choose from, as is the case with any diner worth its salt.  If you ask me, anyway.

Immediately I gravitated towards the lemon meringue pie.  I think it's memories of the pie I used to see at my "childhood diner" that spurs this.  The meringue was as high as an elephant's eye.  And I have never found a pie that comes close.  But I'll keep searching...

Anyway, while I ate my pie, Rob suggested that I try a lemon meringue of my own.  I eagerly rose to the challenge!

So here's how it went down, folks...

Let's start with our filling.  Because that's the bestest part!

Lemons.  Of course.  Mine were a bit on the smallish side so I used 4 and juiced the living daylights out of them.  I probably could have used 5, honestly.

In a saucepan I whisked together 1 1/4 cups of sugar, 2 tablespoons of flour, 3 tablespoons of cornstarch and a pinch of salt.

To that I added my lemon juice and 1 1/2 cups of water, and onto the heat it went in the hopes that it would come to a boil.

Meanwhile...mmm...

2 tablespoons of butter magically hopped into a bowl and awaited their addition to the boiling sauce, where they would then melt in and add more deliciousness.

Butter = magic.  As you well know.

Now, while I was waiting for the sauce to come to a boil, and while the butter was jumping into a bowl, I was separating egg yolks and whites.

Egg yolks are pretty.  Even the broken one.

I mixed the yolks a little bit, then poured approximately half a cup of the boiling sauce into the yolks while whisking like a crazy person.

I'm sure you know this but just in case you don't: It's important to keep the egg yolks moving so they don't get scrambled from the heat of the sauce.  In fact, that's why the hot sauce gets poured into the eggs in the first place, rather than the yolks being poured into the saucepan.  This is called "tempering" the eggs, and it prevents scramblage.  Scrambled eggs in your custard = kinda gross.

Once the yolks and sauce are adequately whisked, the mixture is then added back to the saucepan.  Again, whiskwhiskwhisk.  Whisk so much you can't even take a picture of it.

Boil the mixture until it gets nice and thick and pretty much keep stirring it the entire time.  Yeah, yeah, it's work.  But burned or spilled-over lemon custard? Gross.

Once this was nice and thick I set the pan aside and allowed the custard to cool.

Step 2: The crust.

I used a Pillsbury roll-out crust for this.  I just love those things.  And besides, I have yet to attempt my own crust.

Clearly I need to work on my fluting.  I think my pie pan's a little deep, because I didn't have enough crust to flute well.

I pricked it all over and put it in a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes.

Voila! Lovely and golden.

Step 3: The meringue.

Egg whites went into the bowl of the stand mixer and whipped them just a bit until they started to get foamy.

To this I added 1/2 tsp of cream of tartar...

...and 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract.

And 6 tablespoons of sugar.  They were too shy to be photographed.

Then I whipped it on up!

Eventually the yolks got all nice and thick and I knew it was time to put my pie together!

Lemon custard, meet pie crust.

Meringue, meet lemon custard.

Y'all are about to become good, good friends.

10 minutes later at 350 degrees...

It's so pretty!

And here's a slice:

Next time I make this, I might even go 1.5 times on the lemon part - it just didn't seem like there was as much as there should have been.  Or maybe I'm just a filthy glutton.

Either way, it was super tasty and like sunshine on a plate!

Enjoy!

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