Lemon + Meringue = Pie

Well, I have to be honest with you guys. When I read “Lemon Meringue Pie” for this months Daring Bakers challenge I didn’t know what to expect. Sure, I’d seen what I thought were lemon meringue pies before, but they were mystery of browned meringue… what was really under them? Where was the lemon? Well, thanks to Jen over at Canadian Baker, it’s no longer a mystery to me!

I started out making the pie dough. I won’t lie – I’m not pie expert – but I do have a few pies under my belt.. so I cut that butter, rolled that dough, and put that pie dough back in the fridge where it belonged. Since this post thus far has been in the spirit of full disclosure – I have to admit that I had decided I wanted to do mini-pies.. but I didn’t have any small pans. So we (my lovely assistant (aka my wonderful mom) and I) had the idea to use the muffin top pan we had. I had a quick crimping lesson from my mom, and then tried my hand at dolling-up the crusts :)

Unfortunately, we also didn’t have any pie weights (nor rice.. nor beans..) so we tried using couscous (if you look closely in the pictures below you can see the couscous-filled pies). Let me tell you – that was a bad idea. My mom spent quite awhile freeing the crusts of the itty-bitty particles. Anyhow, once the crusts were baked, we set them aside to cool.

The next part was to make the lemon curd. The hardest part about this was not eating it all before putting it in the pies! Let me tell you – that stuff is amazing. It’s such a wonderful combination of lemony-tart-goodness!

About the same time as the lemon curd was cooking, we were working on the candied lemon peels to decorate the tops of the lemon meringue pies. I thought the pie needed a little something extra, so we came up with the idea of putting some lemon curls on top. We did those by just boiling them several times in water.. and then letting them cook in heavily sugared water for awhile. We then needed a way to hopefully get them to keep their curls, so my mom suggested pinning them to a paper towel. The result was a rather amusing maze of lemon peels and straight pins. It looks to me like a little race course for the lemon zest! :)

Anyhow, while the lemon peels were turning themselves into statues, we worked on the meringue. Once the crusts were cool, we put the warm lemon curd in, and let them sit under they were cooled to room temperature. Then came the fun part of piling the meringue on top! It was fun to make crazy designs and spikes in the meringue. The pies happened to go into the oven again while we were sitting down to dinner – but I got up every couple of minutes to ensure the meringue tops didn’t burn..

This was a fun challenge – it was a great chance to make pies (which, like I said, I don’t make very often), taught me that couscous is not a good substitute for pie weights (!), and I learned that there is not much mystery to lemon meringue pies – it really is just lemon, meringue, and pie!

Lemon Meringue Mini-Pies, garnished with Strawberries and Candied Lemon Peels: