Pucker up!

My first of many Daring Baker’s Challenge – Lemon Meringue Pie, Woohoo!

I have been a fan of Daring Baker’s after my dearest friend and eating buddy introduced me to food blogs. My first thought when my friend sent me links that made my mouth water and made my mind explode was A) How did I live without food blogs for so long?! and B) How do I become part of Daring Bakers? I thoroughly enjoy cooking and my TV usually has a cooking show on (I was so excited when I figured out my DVR let’s me record 2 at the same time!) but I’ll be the first to admit I’m not the most gifted baker but I thought why not, I’ll dive in head first and test my skills. So with all the formalities out of the way let’s break this Lemon Meringue Pie down!

The Crust!

Oh lord, where do I start… this past fall I was in the zone with crusts because I was determined to perfect my tarts – chocolate, curd filled, cream, you name I have probably tried it. I had my crust making down to an art so I could just look at a ball of dough and poof! it would roll out and blind bake itself all nice and golden without cracks and without too much shrinking. When I first read the recipe for the crust I noticed there was a lot more sugar in this dough then I was used to and my first thought was, no biggie, it will be sweeter! However this dough just didn’t want to cooperate.

The first problem I ran into was the counter surface I was using to roll out the dough is over my dishwasher and being the idiot I am, I turned it on about 30 minutes before I rolled out my dough. Yes, as you would have guessed my kitchen counter was warm and butter rich dough started to break apart as I rolled it out! I had problems getting the dough into the pie dish and as you can see my final results weren’t all that impressive. I ended up sticking the whole thing into the refrigerator because the dough wouldn’t come off the parchment paper and was cracking to no end. Not a pretty site. During baking, the crust seemed to puff up after I removed my baking beans and took on an appearance I had never seen before. I’ll account that from the butter melting in the crust on my counter and the sugar rich crust. I think I’ll stick to one of my fool proof crust recipes next time.


The Good Stuff (a.k.a. Filling and Meringue)

Tasty! I have made many lemon curds before (usually with a double boiler) so this was a slightly different technique. The filling was shinny, thick, and had a great lemony tang. Personally I like my curds so tart that it makes my lips pucker so I can almost always add more lemon juice. I have to say it was very tasty and I’ll have to keep this one in my repertoire.
This was my first attempt at meringues and I have to say it went a lot easier then I thought it would. The egg whites whipped up beautifully and as I added the sugar at the end it turned into something so glossy and mouth watering I couldn’t wait to try it.

Putting it all together!
I let the filling and crust cool down before I introduced them to each other. Even though my crust didn’t turn out all that great I was glad I could fill it with all that curd and then top it all off with the meringue to hide all my flaws. I piled the meringue high making some nice peaks and then placed it under my boiler to give it some color. Well… I should have watched it like a hawk because I let it get a little too brown but it was still tasty.

After the first slice was cut I couldn’t wait to stuff my face with lemon meringue pie. Even though my crust has this strange texture (kind of like honeycomb?) the combination of the crisp crust, silky tangy curd, and fluffy meringue was wonderful. I was pretty happy with my first Daring Bakers challenge (even with all the crust problems) and I’m looking forward to next months! Now go forth and bake!