The Ultimate Lemon Meringue Pie! Quite a bold claim for a humble blog post, but hopefully there are at least a couple of techniques here you can use to ensure you make the best lemon meringue pie you can muster!
The Right Crust
We all have had that experience of being so excited to bake a pie, only for the crust to not turn out the way we wanted. Starting over is frustrating! There’s always the option of store-bought crusts, but then you can’t taste the sweet rewards of making everything from scratch. Luckily, there are a few ways of making your crust absolutely foolproof (mostly)!
As we all know, butter is the most important part of a pie crust, and so it is important to choose our butter carefully. It sounds silly, doesn’t it? Isn’t butter just… butter? As it turns out, the type of butter you use can make or break your recipe. Butter that is higher in fat content better absorbs heat in the oven, allowing it to melt more slowly and give more time for the crust to properly harden. Of course, you might also have the same luck with any old butter or shortening you have laying around, but there’s always that chance of being sent back to the drawing board!
Don’t Spoil the Curd!
A good lemon curd filling is one of the distinguishing features of this recipe and gives this dessert its name. Unfortunately, this is also one of the most commonly botched parts of the recipe! Rather than placing all of the ingredients in a hot pan, as many people do, you are much more likely to obtain the consistency you desire if you thoroughly mix everything in a bowl prior to putting it on the stove. The resulting batter allows all of the ingredients to blend more evenly, resulting in the perfect texture for a pie.
Sturdy Meringue
Possibly even more frustrating than a bad crust is meringue that shrinks and collapses on itself. It acts like it doesn’t want to play along! Luckily there is a reliable way to make sure your meringue behaves itself. Everyone remembers playing with cornstarch as a kid to make those slimy concoctions in the kitchen sink. Cornstarch is the go-to thickening method for countless recipes, and this one is no different. Adding cornstarch to egg whites prior to beating them provides a more stable foundation due to the added thickness, keeping the whole pie looking fluffy.
It’s up to you!
There’s no single “correct” way to make a pie or any other dessert for that matter. All we can do is look at what has traditionally worked for others. Hopefully, you found something useful or thought-provoking here and will enjoy experimenting with your own techniques! Who knows, maybe you will be the one to stumble across the Ultimate Lemon Meringue Pie recipe!