Mini Lemon Meringue Pies

Last week I met a nice fella who saw the state of disarray of my phone. He offered to bring me his spare phone back from Portland, and I took him up on the offer! But being in the cooking/baking mood I've been in, I offered to make his favorite pie. That happened to be lemon meringue pie, which I've never made...and I'm not even sure I've ever eaten it. *sigh* However, he also said he preferred savory to sweets, but I wasn't about to cook him real food, so I decided to make mini pies.

(After I had finished browning the meringue, I finally found the setting on my camera to not make the pictures so yellow... This was most exciting, and will definitely result in many more posts :-) )

I only made 4 mini pies, as I was using leftover pie crust from a quiche I made. Also, I adapted this recipe from Martha Stewart, who may I say, pretentiously assumed her amateur bakers all own a stand-up mixer. For shame, Martha, for shame.

First it is best to prepare the crust. I used a muffin pan. Roll the crust out, use a large mug to cut out your circular crust for each pie. Then roll those individual small crusts out. Place them in the muffin pan, and stick it in the fridge to harden for awhile (15-30 min). Have the oven preheated to 400 degrees. Line each pie crust with parchment paper, fill it with beans or rice, and stick in the oven for 10 minutes or so. Remove from oven, remove parchment paper and rice... Be sure you get all of the rice ;-)

Filling
3 egg yolks
a little over 1/2 c pure cane sugar
a heaping Tbsp. of lemon zest
1/3 C of lemon juice (I used the zest and juice of two lemons)
3 Tbsp of cornstarch
2 Tbsp of butter, diced
a dash of salt











Combine sugar and cornstarch. In a "non-reactive" saucepan mix and continuously stir egg yolks and lemon juice. Slowly add sugar/cornstarch combination, and stir continuously for 10-15 minutes on medium to medium-high heat, until boiling. Remove from heat and add lemon zest, butter, and salt. Stir until well mixed. Set aside to cool.


Once filling is cool, spoon into baked pie crusts. Cool these in a refrigerator for at least an hour.

Meringue
3 egg whites
1/3 C of pure cane sugar
dash of salt


Once the filling is sufficiently cooled, turn on the oven broiler. Set a medium sized saucepan of water on to boil. Mix egg yolks, sugar, and salt in a mixing bowl and whisk over boiling water until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is warm. It should be bubbly. Then use the whisk attachments for your mixer and run on medium to high until you have a nice, fluffy meringue that creates peaks. Using a smaller spatula, top the pies with this. I don't have suggestions on how to make it look pretty, sorry. Place in over under broiler for 30 seconds to 1 minute, constantly keeping an eye on it. You want the top to be lightly browned. Remove and let cool.














I had a mishap... and I had to redo the meringue. Thank goodness I had extra!!

Enjoy!

Chicken Sandwich plus plus

Tonight I made sandwiches for my roommate, his friend, and myself. We were all pretty pleased with how they turned out. Of course, I don't have any pictures. First of all, I lost my Blackberry (temporarily), and secondly my new, real camera was in my purse, in my car and needing new batteries.

Ingredients
4 chicken breasts
Italian dressing
lemon pepper
4-5 cups of cleaned baby spinach
4-5 white mushrooms, sliced
mozzarella cheese
tomato slices
balsamic vinaigrette
olive oil
cooking sherry

First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Then place the chicken breasts in a shallow baking pan (I used 9x9) sprinkled with lemon pepper and pour 2-3 Tbsp of the dressing in the pan. Put into oven.

Yikes, I have no idea how long I actually cooked the chicken, but it came out perfectly. So I'll give you a blow by blow of what I did while it was cooking.

After I put the chicken in the oven, I took an eight minute shower. Then I posted on Twitter. So I guess about 12 minutes went by before I decided to start working on the other food.

I heated 2 Tbsp of olive oil and 2 tsp of sherry in a small pan. I added the sliced mushrooms, and let them saute, stirring frequently. While that was going on I washed the spinach, cut the mozzarella cheese into thin slices, sliced the tomato, and prepared the hamburger buns to be toasted.

I guess about another 10 minutes went by, and I added the spinach to the mushrooms, dashing in some balsamic vinaigrette. I removed the pan from heat, to let the spinach wilt more slowly. Then I put the buns in the oven for about 5 minutes. At some point around here, I checked one of the chicken breasts. It looked like they were ready to come out of the oven and rest for a couple of minutes.

Then I added the cheese to the buns in the oven, while I cut the chicken breasts in half. They really were soo juicy and flavorful. I removed the buns from the oven, put the chicken on top of the cheese and topped it with the spinach/mushroom mixture and a tomato slice.

The sandwich was a hit. I can't wait to make them again!