Lemon

I'm a HUGE fan of lemon meringue pie but quite honestly, any store bought versions are impressively bad. They either have heavy and dense crusts, overly sweet lemon curd, over or under cooked meringue, or a lovely combination of these unfortunate problems. This dairy free beauty has a light and flaky crust, tart lemon curd, and perfectly cooked meringue topping. This is an overall great adaption of the Cook's Illustrated recipe.

Use the pie crust recipe from the quiche. Once it's chilled, roll out and form into the pie shell. Refrigerate the rolled out dough. Then after a half hour, crimp the edges and refrigerate for another hour or so until perfectly firm. Once that's all done, preheat the oven to 400. Cover the pie crust with tin foil and fill with pie weights or beans. Bake for about 15 minutes and then remove the tin foil and, reduce the temperature to 350, and bake for another 10 minutes to achieve the slightly browned crust.

Lemon Curd:
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups cold water
6 egg yolks
1 tablespoon lemon zest
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 tablespoons earth balance butter replacement

Meringue:
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1/2 cup sugar
4 egg whites
1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

Now that your pie crust is cooling and looking wonderful, it's time to prepare the filling. In a large sauce pan that is a non-reactive surface (none of that nonstick stuff), mix the sugar, cornstarch, salt, and water and bring to a simmer over medium heat whisking occasionally until it begins to thicken and then stir more frequently. The mixture will start to become translucent after several minutes at which point you need to add in the egg yolks two at a time. Then, whisk in the zest, then lemon juice, then the butter. Bring this whole thing to a simmer vigorously whisking. Remove from heat and cover with plastic wrap making sure to have the plastic touching the surface of the lemon curd to prevent the development of a film.

Meringue time! In a small saucepan, bring the cornstarch to a simmer with 1/3 cup water whisking frequently until the mixture thickens and starts to become translucent. Then let it cool while you go to whipping those whites.

Heat your oven to 325 and mix together the sugar and cream of tartar in a small bowl. Then put the egg whites and vanilla in your stand mixer and mix on medium high with the whisk attachment until frothy (about 30 seconds or so). With the motor running on high, slowly pour in the sugar/cream of tartar mixture and whip to soft peaks. Finally, pour in the cooled cornstarch mixture in and continue to whip until you have stiff peaks.

Pour in the slightly cooled lemon curd into the pie crust and then pour on the meringue smoothing out with a rubber spatula and swirling to make those little peaks throughout. The trick here is to spread the meringue all the way to the crust and make sure it's touching the crust that way it'll attach and not shrink while baking.

Bake the pie for 20 minutes until the top is golden brown. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature.

ENJOY!