One of the little joys of visiting Helen’s family in San Francisco, besides visiting them and going to Pride, was coming back with a bagful of Meyer lemons from the tree in her brother’s backyard. Meyer lemons, for those of you unfamiliar with them, are less acidic and slightly sweeter than regular lemons. They are thought to be a cross between a lemon and a mandarin or other orange. They make dynamite lemonade, and an awesome lemon meringue pie, which is how I used our batch.
I followed the recipe in Nick Malgieri’s How to Bake
- Make your own crust. Nothing ruins an otherwise-perfect pie like a soft pre-made crust. Roll your own and prebake it so you have a crunchy contrast to the creamy lemon and airy meringue. I used Malgieri’s Flaky Pie Dough recipe, which was great. It wasn’t pretty—I’m more of a natural cake baker than pie maker, so the edges were jagged and wouldn’t hold a candle to my sister-in-law’s perfectly crimped borders—but it tasted great.
- Follow Malgieri’s trick of using milk, not water, for the lemon custard, and steeping the lemon zest in it first.
- His method of whisking the meringue over a pot of simmering water before whipping really does keep it from weeping.
What are your favorite summertime recipes or favorite fruits to pick?
I love lemon meringue pie. Yum.
My specialty is peach pie; the secret ingredient to give it that extra kick is a little bit of almond extract. I have fond childhood memories of my mother’s standing promise that she’d help us bake a blueberry pie any time my brother and I picked 4 cups of berries. (The vacant land behind our house was full of wild berries.) I can remember standing on a chair to reach the stove so I could stir the berries as they cooked down. The unusual ingredient there was lemon juice.