Lime Meringue Challenge

Bruce, of Bruce and Shari, grows large crops of beautiful key limes, but doesn't particularly like the main dairy ingredient in a typical Key Lime Pie...sweetened condensed milk. My challenge was to make a Lime pie that kept the tart bite of the key limes but had the lovely texture of lemon meringue. I decided to use a 50/50 mix of dairy to fruit juice, so after squeezing about 25 limes I had 1 1/2 cups. When I tasted the juice I discovered that it was beautifully sweet on it's own and didn't require the usual amount of sugar, so I cut back there and created my pie custard. I decided to make the meringue a bit sweeter than I usually do to offset the tart custard. Will it be a hit? We'll see.

Lemon Meringue Part 2

Well the pie was a success, but I don't think the lemon zest in the crust made much of a difference either way. Here's a picture of the finished pie.

Lemon Meringue Part 1

We were invited to dinner at Betsy and John's and we're bringing dessert. Lemon Meringue was the request, easy enough. As I said earlier, I think I've got that recipe fine tuned...for now. But what can I do to make this one special??? I decided to tweak the crust a bit and add some grated lemon peel to it. Can you have too much lemon flavor? We'll find out. Here's a photo of the crust before it gets lined with foil and loaded with beans to prebake.

Coconut Cream Hit

So, the lastest pie was a hit, but I'm still not satified. I bumped up the coconut in the pie but want more coconut flavor. I used about a 60/40 dairy to coconut milk ratio, but I think I need to reverse that. I also think I overcompensated for the first runny one and this one is a bit thick, once cold. Still, it was yummy either way.

Pecan Tassies Part 3 and 4...

At the request of the BF, I made Pecan Tassies for the family Easter picnic. I decided to make two batches and to tweak them in between and see which were better. Batch 3 was made with a 50/50 mix of brown sugar and Karo syrup and Batch for 70/30 Karo to brown sugar. Batch 3 was the clear winner. It had enough of the pecan pie texture and matching sweetness and flavor from the brown sugar. Next up the crust... I think it needs more butter and less cream cheese, but we'll see.

Back to coconut cream...

I have been thinking about the recipe and think I have a new idea to really punch up the coconut flavor. I think I will use straight coconut milk in the custard and grind some flaked coconut up in the crust and substitute some of the flour with it.

In the meantime I have been making marshmallows, no not for pie, for bunnies and peeps for Easter...

Pecan Tassie Success?

Well so far I have made two batches of Pecan Tassies. I decided early on not to use Dark Brown Sugar because it has too much molasses flavor. I also decided to stick with one crust recipe while testing fillings and then tweak it once I had the filling perfected. The first batch was a mix of butter, light brown sugar, eggs and vanilla. It was OK, nothing to brag about though. To me it seemed dry and nothing like the pecan pie texture that I wanted. For the second batch I replaced some of the brown sugar with Karo light corn syrup. This was a big improvement but still not exactly what I want. For the next batch, I plan on replacing more of the sugar with Karo and adding a bit more butter...stay tuned.

Pecan Tassies

While not really pie, I decided to make some pecan tassies for a co-worker's birthday this week. Pecan is her favorite pie, but it doesn't really work for a crowd and is a bit messy for a meeting treat. I'm working on a recipe right now. The crust will be a mix of pastry flour, cream cheese, butter and salt. Just working out the proportions. The filling is so sweet, that I don't want any sugar in the crust, but the cream cheese provides some added richness. For the filling, I am thinking about subbing the traditional Karo syrup of a pie with brown sugar, since it's in smaller doses. I will make some with light and some with dark brown sugar. I'll let you know the results.

This is an apple pie that I made for Thanksgiving 2007. I used some small turkey and apple cutters to make the vents and then decorated the crust with the cut outs. It was lovely and baked to a golden perfection with just a light milk wash. It passed the test of BF's uncle, who is a pie lover... I'm going to have run the Lemon Meringue that I recently perfected by him soon, since it's his favorite.

Why Pie

I am starting a blog because I bake a lot of things, but especially love to bake pies. I bake pies over and over, tweaking my recipes until my Chief Pie Tester (BF) proclaims that it is the best whatever-pie he has ever tasted, or he begs me not to subject him to another whatever-pie for a while. Then I move on to another pie. Right now I am working on coconut cream pie. The first one tasted great, but the texture, well runny doesn't begin to describe it. The second was better, but not close to being GREAT.