Lemon Meringue Pie with Sweet Pastry Shell

Sweet tart pastry dough

• 1-1/3 cups all-purpose flour
• Pinch of salt
• 1/3 cup confectioners' sugar
• 6 tbsp unsalted butter, chilled and cut into small cubes
• 1 large egg, separated
• 1-1/2 to 2 tbsp ice water

Lemon filling

• 1 large egg and 3 large egg yolks
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• Finely grated zest and freshly squeezed juice of 2 large unwaxed lemons
• 1 stick unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 1/2 cup whipping cream

Meringue

• 3 large egg whites
• 1/4 tsp cream of tartar*
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar, plus 1 tbsp for sprinkling
• 1/2 tsp finely grated lemon zest

*substitute an equal amount of lemon juice OR white vinegar for the cream of tartar if you don't have it.

Directions


pastry dough:

Process flour, salt, confectioners’ sugar and butter in a food processor fitted with a metal blade until the ingredients are thoroughly mixed and resemble fine crumbs.
Add the egg yolk and ice water. Process again until the dough forms a ball and leaves the side of the bowl.
Add extra water if the dough seems crumbly or dry.

Form dough into a ball, press gently to get rid of cracks, wrap in foil,  chill  1 hour.
Remove dough from the refrigerator.
Let dough soften 10 to 15 minutes at room temperature before rolling out.
Roll out dough fairly thinly onto a lightly floured surface.
Press dough into tart pan and trim off excess.

To pre-bake the tart shell, take long thin strips of foil and fold them over the edge of the tart to protect and support the sides of the pastry shell. Prick the base of the shell with a fork. Chill for 30 to 40 minutes in the refrigerator. 

Bake the tart shell in a preheated 375°F oven for 8 to 10 minutes, until crust is lightly browned
Beat egg white with a fork and set aside.
Remove the foil strips and brush the tart shell with egg white.
Return shell to oven for 8 to 10 minutes, or until pastry is golden and crisp.
Let the tart shell cool in the pan before removing. 

Lemon filling and meringue

Lower oven temperature to 325°F.

Using a lemon zester, scrape yellow rind from exterior of clean lemon. Do not include the white as it is bitter.

Set lemon zest aside.

Heat lemons a few minutes in the oven before squeezing to obtain more juice from them.

Or heat lemons slightly by soaking in hot water before cutting.

Juice lemons and strain out seeds. Use a strainer or squeeze lemons through cheesecloth.

Set lemon juice aside.

Put the egg, egg yolks and sugar in a bowl and beat until slightly thickened and a paler yellow.
Beat in the lemon zest, butter, whipping cream and finally the lemon juice.
Pour the filling into the prebaked pie crust and bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 30 minutes, until  filling is barely set in the centre.
Do not let it overbake.

Put the egg whites and cream of tartar in a grease-free bowl.
Using an electric whisk, whisk until frothy and stiff peaks form.
Whisk in 1/4 cup sugar until the meringue is thick and glossy.
Fold in the other 1/4 cup sugar and the zest using a metal spoon. 

Pile the meringue onto the tart, swirling and peaking.
Sprinkle with the remaining tablespoon sugar. Meringue will cut easier if a little sugar is sifted over it before browning.
Return the tart to the oven for 30 minutes, until meringue is browned and crisp on the outside.
Serve just warm or cold.

Meringue cuts easier if you use a heated knife to slice the pie.

Makes one 9" tart.

Cherry Pie Recipe from Kingston, Ontario

A friend first made fresh cherry pie after clipping a recipe from the Kingston Whig-Standard in July, 1975. Once a year, when her local grocery store sells pails of fresh-picked, sour pitted cherries, she gets out this yellowed newspaper clipping. To fill a deep 9" pie plate, you'll need 4 well-packed cups of fresh cherries. My friend uses butter instead of shortening in the pastry; she says to measure 1/4 cup of softened butter plus a dab (an extra teaspoonful of butter.) Her cherry pies are delicious and old-fashioned--there's no red food colouring added to the filling, so it's not as artificially red as the kind you buy.
Pastry for a 9" pie:

• 2-1/4 cups sifted cake and pastry flour
• 1 tsp. salt
• 1 tsp. sugar
• 1/4 cup shortening (or butter, see above)
• 1/3 cup lard
• 1/2 cup heavy cream (18%)

Cherry Filling:

• 1 cup white granulated sugar
• 1-1/2 tbsp. cornstarch
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 4 well-packed cups sour red cherries, washed and pitted
• 1/4 tsp almond flavoring

Glaze:

• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp milk or cream

Pastry: Sift flour, salt and sugar into a bowl. Cut in shortening till it's the texture of cornmeal, then cut in lard until it's the size of small peas. Sprinkle cream over the flour a little at a time and mix with a fork till dough forms a ball. Divide in half, make 2 rounds, and wrap in wax paper. Chill before rolling.
Bottom crust: Roll out one chilled round on a floured surface and use to line a 9 inch pie plate. Filling: Mix the sugar, cornstarch, salt, cherries and flavoring together in a bowl, then turn the filling into your pastry-lined pie plate.
Top crust: Roll out the 2nd round of pastry to make a top crust, cover the cherry filling, crimp the edges of the bottom and top crust, prick a design in the top crust with a fork. To make a lattice top crust, roll out the 2nd round of pastry, cut into long 1/2 inch wide strips, and weave them together. Moisten the edges of the lower crust to attach the strips to the edges; crimp. Optional: brush the top crust with a glaze of 1 tbsp sugar mixed into 1 tbsp milk or cream.

Bake in a preheated 450 degree F oven 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F and bake 25 minutes or until juice bubbles up through the top crust. Allow pie to cool well before cutting.

Best Ever Lemon Meringue Pie-- Ann Landers' recipe

When we were growing up, we'd trade sections of the evening newspaper to read after dinner. Since there was only enough room near the kitchen sink for one to wash and two to dry, the sister who wasn't helping would sometimes read the funny bits from Ann Landers' advice column to the others.

Ann Landers, whose real name was Eppie (Esther) Lederer, died at age 83 in 2002 and her column, "Dear Ann Landers", no longer runs in the Star. My mom saved this clipping in her box of recipes because lemon meringue pie was my sister Sandra's  favorite.

The recipe was sent in by a reader signed "Glad to Share," who said it was the "world's best, no-fail lemon meringue pie." Eppie Lederer had the recipe tested in her own kitchen and called it "a winner."

• 1 baked pie shell
• 1-1/4 cups sugar
• 6 tbsp cornstarch
• 2 cups water
• 3 eggs, separated
• 1/3 cup lemon juice
• 3 tbsp butter
• 1-1/2 tsp lemon extract
• 2 tsp vinegar

Mix sugar and cornstarch together in top of double boiler.

Add the 2 cups of water.

Combine egg yolks with juice and heat.

Add to rest of mixture.

Cook until thick over boiling water for 25 minutes. This does away with starchy taste.

Now add lemon extract, butter and vinegar and stir thoroughly.

Pour into a deep, nine-inch pie shell and let cool.

Cover with meringue and brown in oven.

Never-fail Meringue

• 1 tbsp cornstarch
• 2 tbsp cold water
• 1/2 cup boiling water
• 3 egg whites
• 6 tbsp. sugar
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• pinch of salt

Blend cornstarch and cold water in a saucepan.
Add boiling water and cook, stirring until clear and thickened.

Let stand until completely cold.

With electric beater at high speed, beat egg whites until foamy

Gradually add sugar and beat until stiff, but not dry.

Turn mixer to low speed, add salt and vanilla.

Gradually beat in cold cornstarch mixture.

Turn mixer again to high speed and beat well.

Spread meringue over cooked pie filling.

Bake at 350 F for about 10 minutes.

This meringue cuts beautifully and never gets sticky. Enjoy!

Apple Pie

Lake Simcoe Apple Pie

The best apple pies I've ever had were made with apples from the trees planted by my great-grandparents near Lake Simcoe. These trees weren't sprayed or pruned for easy picking.

One of us would climb a tree and gently shake a limb to make the apples fall. The rest of us would gather them from the ground. The wormier windfall apples were raked into a pile and composted, which would attract a lot of bees and wasps.

Nobody wanted to gather the wormy apples, and my grandmother Mary had to remind everyone to come pick them up each year.

We'd cut out the parts with worm holes and peck marks made by the birds, before peeling and slicing the apples. My sister Sandra and I once spent an entire day in the small kitchen, making pies to freeze. 

The old apple trees started being less productive, so Sandra's husband Karl decided to prune them, but that didn't help. Eventually he cut most of them down. 

My mom planted a new apple tree where the weeping willow used to be, near the house her grandfather built. Update 2022: The apple new apple tree didn't survive and is gone now. This year, I bought some Gravenstein pie apples from Old Homestead Orchard farm but they were small so we ate them. The best pie apples are large, for easy peeling, and have dense-textured pulp. Braeburn and Northern Spys are  good pie apples.

Update 2024: This year I picked some large Cortland apples from an orchard near Stouffville, and everybody wanted to just eat them. It was hard  keep some apples for Thanksgiving pie.

• Pastry for a double-crust pie
• 1/2 - 3/4  cup sugar (more sugar if apples are tart)
• squeeze of lemon juice (if apples aren't tart)
• 2 Tbsp. flour
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• dash of grated nutmeg
• 6 cups peeled, sliced apple
• 2 Tbsp. very cold butter, cut in pieces

Line a 9-inch pie plate with pastry.  Roll a 12-inch round for a 9-inch pie.

Dough made from lard can be rolled very thin. If you roll on a floured, flowered cloth the dough should be thin enough that you can see the flower pattern through the pastry dough. I roll pastry on floured parchment paper now and just imagine the flower pattern. 

 

Pre-heat oven to 425 degrees F.

In a bowl, mix flour, sugar and cinnamon.

Toss the apples in the sugar mixture, then place apple slices in the pastry-lined pie plate. 

Dot with butter.

Top with a round of pastry and flute edges.

For a sweet crust, sprinkle the pastry top with sugar before baking. (My mother never did this.)

Cut vents into the top of the pastry so that steam can escape. Vent an apple pie by pricking an "A" in the top crust with a fork. When she was little Lauren said the "A" on an apple pie was really for Arthur, because her grandpa liked apple pie the best.

Bake 10 minutes in preheated 425 degree F oven.

Reduce heat to 350 degrees F and bake 30 minutes or so, until pie crust is golden.

Baking perfect pastry comes with experience because you have to know your oven.

When my mom's oven was getting old, she started baking pies at 425 degrees for 10-15 minutes and turned it down to 375 to finish baking. She says if you don't have a very hot oven you might have to bake a pie at 400 degrees for 40-50 minutes. And if you don't get good results baking pastry, maybe you need a new oven, "You used to get an oven when you got married and you'd use it for life, now you might need a new one every 5-8 years."  For some people that now seems to apply to husbands, too.

Put a cookie sheet on the rack below the rack the pie is on, in case hot juice spits out and spills over, to avoid having to scrape burnt pie filling off the oven bottom.

Pecan Pie

Traditional Pecan Pie #1

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Line a 9-inch pie plate with pastry.

Over the crust, sprinkle:

• 1-1/2 cups pecan halves.

In a pot, melt till slightly browned:

• 1/4 cup butter

Combine in mixing bowl:

• 3/4 cups sugar
• 3 beaten eggs
• 1-1/2 tsp real vanilla extract
• 1 cup corn syrup
• the melted butter
• 1/2 cup heavy (over 30% fat) whipping cream

1. Pour filling over the pecans in the prepared, uncooked pie shell.
2. Bake at 350F for 50-60 minutes.
3. While the pie is baking, make the whipped cream topping (see below.)
4. Cover the topping and keep in the fridge until ready to serve.
5. When oven timer dings, check that the filling has "set" before you take the pie from the oven.
6. Cool till just warm and cut into generous slices.
7. Serve with whipped cream topping (see below.)

Traditional Pecan Pie #2

A 9" pie that requires only 1 cup of pecans.

• 3 large eggs
• 2/3 cups white granulated sugar
• dash of salt
• 1 cup dark corn syrup
• 1/3 cup melted butter or margarine
• 1 cup pecan halves
• 1 9" unbaked pastry shell

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Beat eggs thoroughly with sugar, dash of salt, corn syrup and melted butter.
3. Mix in pecans.
4. Pour mixture into unbaked pastry shell.
5. Bake in moderate oven 50 minutes, or till knife inserted halfway between outside and centre of filling comes out clean.
6. Remove pie from oven and cool on rack.

Whipped Cream Topping:

Chill the mixing bowl and beaters in the fridge for at least half an hour before use.
Makes a cup of whipped cream topping.

• 1/2 cup heavy 35% M.F. whipping cream
• 1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract
• 2 tsp granulated white sugar 

Riverview Plantation Pecan Pie

So good! This recipe has the most nuts and is my favourite.

Baked and cooled pie may be wrapped well and frozen to warm up another time.

Roll out pastry and line a pie plate.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Stir together by hand:

• 3 beaten eggs
• 2/3 cup white granulated sugar
• pinch of salt
• 1 cup corn syrup
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1/4 cup milk
• 5 Tbsp. soft or melted butter
• 2 cups pecans

Spoon the pecan filling into the unbaked, pastry-lined pie plate.
Bake at 350 degrees 45-55 minutes.
Pie is done when the filling has set and a knife inserted into the centre of the pie comes out clean.

Chocolate Coffee Pecan Pie

• 1 cup (250 mL) golden corn syrup
• 1/2 cup (125 mL) brown sugar
• 1 Tbsp (15 mL) espresso or coffee OR 1 Tbsp hot water mixed with 1 tsp instant coffee powder
• 3 large eggs, lightly beaten
• 1/4 cup (60 mL) butter, melted and cooled slightly
• 2 tsp (10 mL) vanilla
• 2 cups (500 mL) pecan halves
• 2 oz coarsely chopped bittersweet chocolate
• unbaked 9" pie shell

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (180 degrees C).

Line a 9" pie pan with pastry.

Sprinkle pecans and chocolate over unbaked pie shell.

In a medium bowl, whisk corn syrup with brown sugar.

Add coffee, beaten eggs, butter, vanilla.

Stir, then pour over pecans in pie shell.

Bake in preheated oven 40-45 minutes or until edges of crust brown and filling is set.

Cool completely before serving.