Fluff Your Meringue

My new home is in a quaint little neighborhood sans traffic, flooding, darkness, and the numerous vagrants doing elicit activities in the lobby outside my door. This place is quiet and sunny and huge- oh and my boyfriend moved in with me!

The kitchen is glorious- I've got all my baking supplies set up on a large baker's rack; we have a gas oven/stove; a nice sunny window with a basil plant, air plant, and a hanging basket holding a mini hot pepper plant. We've got a string of baby hot peppers hanging to dry as well as a big clump of parsley. I just love it!

After the hoopla of getting boxes in, arranging furniture, and resting our weary limbs, I decided to don my cupcake apron once again and bake. I perused my recipe box and found an old recipe one of my mom's clients have given her for lemon meringue pie.

It's funny- every time my mom went over to Ruth Weinman's house, she'd come home with some random trinket: a stack of miss matched Tupperware, a bunch of old crinkly gift bags, stale Halloween candy in March. One day my mom was telling her how much I loved lemon meringue pie and how she wanted to make one for my birthday, but lacked a recipe. Ruth hobbled to the kitchen and scrawled out her own recipe which took my mom several minutes of cursing to decipher at the computer. Nonetheless, she was grateful she did because it is a great recipe that uses a minimalist ingredient approach.

Surprisingly, this was my first time making the pie myself. I was lazy and got a pre-made frozen- my first mistake. Next time I will certainly make my own :) Anyway, the filling came out amazingly well. It was sweet and sour, and silky smooth with flecks of lemon zest. The meringue was not as easy. The first batch I made would not fluff up and was just a foamy puddle at the bottom of the metal bowl. I later discovered that it probably had to do with the bit of yolk I let slide into the egg whites. So I trashed the first batch and started a new one. The new one still didn't form the stiff white peaks I was looking for, but I was so frustrated I gave up and used it as it was.

The pie still came out nicely, but I'll need to practice it again to get it just right :) Needless to say, though, it feels wicked good to get back in the kitchen!