I am not a cake eater. I do like some cakes but if given the choice I would much rather have pie and my favoite pie is Lemon Meringue. So on my birthday my mom always made me a Lemon Meringue Pie and in my opinion she made the best.
The last couple of years that my mom was alive she was too ill to make me a pie and so I did without. And the last couple of years since she has been gone I didn't really have the heart to make it myself but this year changed all that. I felt that I was ready for the challenge.
The Lemon filling is no secret, sugar, lemon zest, lemon juice, eggs, water and cornstarch. But this post is about the crowning glory of any meringue pie and that is the meringue.
Meringue simply put is egg whites, sugar and maybe a little cream of tartar, but there are different ways to make meringue and that's what this post is really about.
Meringue can be put into 2 classes....Hard or Soft. Hard meringues are usually made the same as soft meringues but then they are baked in a very low oven for a very long time to dry them out. A lot of times these hard meringues are piped onto a sheet of parchment paper and made into a "nest" or "bowl" so to speak and then filled with berries, ice cream, custard or cream. But I'm not going to talk about that kind of meringue. I'm going to talk about soft meringue.
Soft meringues are made by whipping eggs whites, sugar and cream of tartar and maybe even a touch of vanilla or almond extract. But if you heat the egg whites with the sugar or make a sugar syrup and add it to the egg whites you get an entirely different creature than just whipping room temperature eggs whites with sugar....it's magical, satiny smooth and almost the consistency of marshmallo fluff. Incredible stuff.
If you combine hot sugar syrup with the eggs whites its called Italian meringue, think Divinity candy. If you combine egg whites and sugar and heat that up it's called Swiss meringue. I'm talking about Swiss meringue for the sake of this post.
I think that putting Swiss meringue on a Lemon Meringue Pie is highly unconventional and my mom never did it that way but after making a few Baked Alaska's for various family members and using Swiss Meringue for that I just felt like it would be a delicious addition to Lemon Meringue Pie. And in my opinion it is.
So here is what you do....the porportions are 1/4 cup of sugar per egg white. So if you have 3 egg whites then you have 3/4 cup of sugar. You can add a touch of cream of tartar to stabalize it just a bit but it's not necessary and you can also add vanilla or almond extract but that is completely optional.
Take your egg whites and add sugar to it. Put them in the top of a double boiler so that you heat them gently. You want to heat them until you can no longer feel the sugar. Either stick your finger in (perfectly clean thank you) and rub it with your thumb to see if you feel any crunch or taste it to see if you taste any crunch.
When it's not crunchy anymore then put the mixture in a deep narrow bowl of a stand mixer. A hand held mixer will not work for this recipe and that's because they just don't have the power to whip for as long and as fast as you need.
TA-DA!!! Finished...look at those prudy peaks. Now just brown them by putting the whole pie in the oven with the broiler on or do like I do...get a portable propane torch...my husband has one for doing various things and I use it to put the browning on my pie.
