Don't Cry For Me, Meringue

What is worse than getting fat from eating desserts?

Getting fat from eating horrible desserts - made by yourself!

It was a dessert much anticipated, at least for me. I have been eyeing this "Lemon Meringue Pie" for weeks. The 2 lemons have been bought long ago and staying fresh in the fridge waiting for this day to be made. I just needed some time and a reason.

There were no special occasions and no party invitations coming up but I did have some time the last 2 days since dinner was crockpot chicken stew and leftover crockpot chicken stew.

So the pastry crust was made before dinner on Tuesday and as it baked in the oven, the buttery aroma filled the whole house. XX ran over to me asking me what the smell was. I was so tempted to eat the crust on its own that night, but I controlled myself.

After dinner, I made the lemon filling. This was when things started to go wrong. I had set the filling to cook on the stove when I got distracted by KK who wanted me to make him a lemonade drink. I'm supposed to be stirring the filling constantly but I forgot about it for a while. When I did, which was just a few mintues later, I promptly turned off the stove, thinking I could come back later after helping KK. Unfortunately, the curd had already started to harden at the bottom. Though none was burnt and I did manage to stir till it was loosen, it was not PERFECTLY smooth.

I poured the filling into the crust and left it to chill in the fridge overnight. Wednesday night, I thought I would finally be able to savour this dessert. All that was left was the meringue.

The egg whites for the meringue were chilled in the fridge so I took it out earlier to get it to room temperature. But maybe not early enough. I'd made a meringue before for my Cuppucino Cupcakes and I noticed that this time my meringue was softer and not so fluffy. It was very glossy though. The recipe asked for hot sugar syrup to be poured into the beaten egg whites. I feel that's too much water since you need to dissolve the sugar in some water to get the syrup. I'm not sure if these are the factors that caused my meringue to weep. Yes, meringues can cry. Everything looked ok as I took it out from the oven. But after chilling it, I discovered that my pie was weeping. It 'cried' so much that there was a pool of water surrounding the pie.

Weeping's a common problem for meringues. You can read more on this site and this site. Happy Home Baker, whose recipe I used for this, has the same problem with her pie. She blamed the Singapore humid weather and her oven. But I don't have that humid weather here and my oven's pretty stable. So what went wrong?

It's the first time my husband and I have tasted a Lemon Meringue Pie. Tastewise, the lemon filling was too sour. The recipe asked for 70-80ml of fresh lemon juice and I'd used 70ml. It was too tart for my liking. Hubby didn't like the filling either. So go easy on the lemon juice if you can't take sourness. But the crust was good, if only it wasn't so soaked. The meringue was sweet and soft. So if you eat the meringue and the filling together, it sort of offset each other.

I won't recommend this recipe so I won't post it here. But I'll use the crust recipe for something else, perhaps an apple pie. Right now, I'm fantasizing about that crust and sweet apple fillings, topped by puff pastry. It shall be done...soon.