Fred Sr.

March has a lot of birthdays for my family, my brother-in-law, great nephew and both my father and father-in-law. This year would have been my late father-in-law’s ninetieth birthday. To commemorate his birthday, my husband requested his father’s favorite pie, Lemon Meringue. ​

Back in September 27, 2003, I made a recipe from Gale Gand, who at the time, had a show on Food Network called Sweet Dreams. My notation on the recipe was “delicious,” but it’s taken me this long to make it again. Although the recipe made enough pie crust for two pies, I cut the recipe in half for one crust. Unlike my mother’s pie crust recipe, this recipe used butter, some eggs and red wine vinegar. The filling was made with lemon zest, lemon juice and a bit of lemon extract along with other ingredients needed to make a pudding. I made the pie crust one early morning and wrapped it in a plastic before placing it in the refrigerator to chill. In the afternoon, I removed the dough from the refrigerator to soften a bit. I followed Gale’s directions in rolling out the dough. However, what I should have done was to prick the dough before blind baking the crust. During baking, the pie crust bubbled up. When I removed the pie weights to finish baking, I pricked the crust so it could retract back against the pie dish. The filling posed no problems in preparing. The filling had a nice lemony taste, not too acidic and not cloyingly sweet.
 
When my mother made meringue topping for her pie, which wasn’t too often, it was just egg whites and some sugar. Ms. Gand’s meringue was egg whites, cream of tartar and hot simple syrup poured into the egg whites. Again, not sweet and it made for a pretty pie topping.
 
I must say the pie turned out wonderful. I was going to give most of it away to neighbors, but my husband wanted to keep it. The only time I may bake a pie is during the fall, apple pie, or a special occasion. These days, keeping a delicious pie around is too tempting and harder to take those calories off.