Month o' Pies, Week 1: Lime'on Meringue Pie

Sometime in between having an unnaturally intense craving for lemon meringue pie, procuring nearly 10lbs more of free, organic, blemished apples, becoming ecstatic at finding a Kabocha squash at Whole Foods, and feeling the pull of my family's holiday tradition of making mince pie, it occurred to me that there was something I could do.

Make pies. Lots of them. I will make a pie a week this month. I will fill December with pie.

My plan is this. To satisfy my most immediate of cravings, I shall make the lemon meringue pie. Since it will be the furthest pie from Christmas, I do not feel too bad that it doesn't contain any traditional holiday charm. Then, in a yet undetermined order, I will make apple pie, pumpkin pie (enter the Kabocha squash - it performs like pumpkin, but... better), mince pie (minus the rotting meat, if you please, I prefer my mince pie to be on the fruity side), and - but wait, there are 5 pie-making opportunities in December.

!!!

The last one is TBD. So far I'm leaning toward something of a pecan-cranberry. My requirements are that it has to be of-the-holidays, and completely different from all the other pies I'm making.

We'll see how things go.

So, while I'm sitting here, blogging, I might as well talk about the pie I made this week. I had the most unfavorable realization during my grocery shopping that there are no organic lemons to be found in any one of four Whole Foods, two Trader Joe's, or even a Fry's. Since my recipe (and any good lemon meringue pie recipe) calls for lemon zest, conventional lemons of indeterminate origin are a deal-breaker. Why yes, I will have an extra helping of those oil-soluble pesticides.

But it's like I always say, when life doesn't give you lemons, make your pie with limes.

For one reason or another, organic limes are not difficult to find right now, and I happened to have some in my very own refrigerator. I was afraid, however, that by using juice and zest from exclusively limes, I would never be able to really satisfy my craving for lemon meringue pie. Enter my lovely Lakewood lemon juice from a bottle. Don't cringe, snobbish foodie, good lemon juice from a bottle will not make your pie taste bad. Nor will it mine, for that matter.

Lime'on meringue pie was born.


LIME'ON MERINGUE PIE
thanks (mostly) be to Cook's Illustrated

Crust
1 1/4 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
3 tbsp cold shortening (I use Jungle Shortening, which is an organic blend of sunflower oil and sustainably produced palm oil)
4 tbsp cold butter cut into bits
5 tbsp cold water
2-3 graham crackers, all crushed up

Lime'on Custard
1 1/2 cups cold water
1 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
pinch o' sea salt
6 egg yolks
1 tbsp lime zest
1/2 cup lemon juice
2 tbsp buttah

Meringue
1/3 cup water
1 tbsp cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp cream of tartar
4 egg whites
1/2 tsp vanilla

Crust
1. Start this pie by making the crust. It has to be prebaked because of the liquidity of the filling, and the fact that it takes longer to bake than meringue. Now. Whisk up the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, salt) in a bowl, then cut in the shortening with a fork or pastry blender. Mix it pretty well, it shouldn't be chunky at all.

2. Cut in the butter. Make sure it's cut up in small pieces before you start, or you'll have terribly overworked pie dough by the time you're done.



Mix it in until it's crumbly. Not chunky, and not sandy, but crumbly. You'll know.



3. Drizzle the water all over the top, and mix it quickly with a spatula. Folding it is best, as you don't want to stir it too much or it'll be tough. Just keep mixing it until it starts to stick together. You can use your hands a bit. Give it a squeeze. Don't use your hands too much, or the butter will melt and that just sucks. When you can make a shaggy/flaky looking lump, it's good to chill. Keep it covered in the fridge for an hour.



4. After it's thoroughly cold, you can roll it out. Here's where this pie crust becomes special. Instead of dusting the counter with flour, you need some of this.



How much you use really depends on you. I used two normal-sized graham crackers and got the right amount, but I suppose I could have used more.

Anyway, put some graham cracker crumbs on the counter, with the dough on top, and some more crumbs on that, and start rolling.



Roll it until it's a big circle, about a foot in diameter. Whenever it threatens stickage, add more graham cracker crumbs. If you can, make the circle relatively even, unlike mine, because it's much easier to fit into a pan and trim.



It should look like a big piece of pie dough with a bunch of graham cracker crumbs forced into it.

5. The easiest way to get this into a pie dish (for me, at least) is to fold it in half, and then in half again, and pick it up carefully and quickly and put it in the pan. I've tried the whole "roll it on the rolling pin" thing, and it always ends badly. Either way, you should end up with this (in a 9" pie dish, by the way):



There should be some overhang. Just trim where it's long and supplement where it's short, and tuck it under all the way around, so the folded edge is flush with the pie plate edge.



Then, using all the skill you can muster, flute the edge (that means crimp it). You can either do what I did and make waves with your fingertips, or press down with a fork all along the edge, or make a neat circle of thumbprints, or leave it plain. I do what my mom taught me.



6. Here comes the frustrating part. You have to chill the damn dough again. For 40 minutes. And then 20 in the freezer (next time, I'm using my mom's recipe, with no chilling required). 10-15 minutes before you take it out of the freezer, preheat your oven to 375°F.

When the extremely cold pie dish comes out of the freezer, cover it double with foil (stagger the corners for maximum coverage) and put in two cups of pie weights. I only had one cup of pie weights, so I used some really old dried cannellini beans to supplement. The weights help keep the crust from shrinking too much, or puffing on the bottom. The foil keeps it from getting burnt on the surface.



Bake it for half an hour, then remove the foil with the weights inside. Leave the crust in for 12 minutes more to finish cooking and brown.



It was around this point that I realized that in my adding a lot of cannellini beans to my pie weights, they had mingled amongst themselves and I now had to fish out all my individual pie weights to put them back in their little jar. Whatever. Next time I'm just getting more pie weights.

Oh, and my crust still shrunk. :( Not the end of the world, but it always makes me sad, and it always shrinks. Maybe it's the pie weight insufficiency.

So anyway, that's how you make the crust. Set it on a wire rack to cool all the way. It doesn't really take all that long.

Lime'on Custard
1. When the crust is cooled, or nearly so, start on this. Whisk the water with the sugar and cornstarch and salt in a saucepan, and put it over medium heat. It should look cloudy-white.



It is of the utmost importance that you get all your ducks in a row, like, right now. Arrange your ingredients as follows, from closest to the saucepan to furthest from: egg yolks, lime zest, lemon juice, and butter.



2. Whisk your saucepan's contents every so often as it heats up. When it starts forming weird clear spots and starts simmering, whisk a lot. It should have gotten more clear overall.



While whisking, slip in the egg yolks, two at a time. Whisk fast, because you don't want the yolks to cook before they're evenly distributed. Keep whisking.

Add the zest. Whisk. Add the juice. Whisk. Add the butter. Whisk until it melts and then comes to a hearty simmer. Keep whisking.



And then take it off the heat and cover it with parchment. Some would say plastic wrap, but to them I reply, "I do not someday want mutant babies." The idea is merely to prevent a top skin from forming, and to keep the whole thing very warm.



Woah, surprise! Your filling is done.

Meringue
1. My favorite part! Egg whites beaten into complete and utter submission. Start virtually the same as last time, but just mix the water and cornstarch in a teeny saucepan over medium-low heat and keep whisking until it gets all thick and goopy. Then you can set it aside.

Then set aside a small bowl with the sugar and cream of tartar mixed together. Preheat the oven to 325°F.

2. The star of the show, of course, are un-blemished, un-tainted, un-impressive egg whites. It all begins with a bowl (copper is amazing for beating whites, but any metal bowl is good, glass will do in a pinch, but for the love of cheese do not use plastic). Put the whites and vanilla in it.



I don't recommend attempting this by hand. I've done it only once, with help, and it was not fun. Fortunately I have an electric hand-mixer with a whisk attachment. Really, any electric mixer will do. On low speed, mix up the egg whites and vanilla until it gets frothy and the egg whites are no longer... you know... mucousy.



3. Little by little, add the sugar mix to the egg whites while beating it up. Keep the speed low, you really don't want to rush it. By the time you're done adding, you should be at the soft-peak stage or nearly there. If you're not there yet, keep beating until you get there.

"Soft peaks" is when you lift out the whisk and the egg white holds its shape, for the most part, but droops over at the point. It looks like a Santa hat.



4. Now it's time to add the gloopy cornstarch mix. Again - little by little. Keep beating in between. In the meantime, take the parchment off of the lime'on pan and return it to low heat to ensure its hotness.

By the end of the cornstarch-gloop-adding, you should be nearly at stiff peaks. If you're not there, get there. Be very careful, and check every 5 seconds or so when you're getting close. If you go too far, something happens to the egg whites and they just... dry up and collapse (much like we all will do, some day). There's no saving them then, so don't get there. Stop beating when you get to stiff peaks. It is much like soft peaks, but the point does not droop. It looks like a witch's hat.





5. So now, you can put your pie together! Pour all the lime'on filling into the cooled crust, as shown.



Then, carefully, put the meringue atop. Go around the edges first, and adhere the meringue to the crust in all places. This ensures two things. 1: the filling cannot escape between the meringue and the crust, and 2: the meringue will not shrink away from the crust in the oven.

Then pile the rest of it in the middle and smooth it all around. Yes, there's a lot.

Oh! And then take a spoon or something and make it stick up all over the place. Then it'll have peaks, and they'll brown.



6. Pop it in the oven for 20 minutes. Take it out to cool on a wire rack, and do not cut until it's completely cool. This takes practically forever. I had to go to bed and have it for breakfast, it took so long.

But then you can cut it, and eat it, and be smug that you have pie when others do not.

And that, friends, is lime'on meringue pie done right.

Cantacoco Smoothie

You know how sometimes, life just starts getting crazy and you can't keep up your habits? Yeah.

Actually, it pleases me when these things happen. Most of the time. After all, most of my habits only exist to prevent me from getting bored. If I know what I am going to do at any given time, I don't have to wonder about what I'm going to do at any given time. But... sometimes something neat happens, and it prevents me from completing my habitual activities. For a whole two and a half weeks I was unable to a) run in circles every other day, b) blog midweek, c) pine about missing my cats and my friends 24 hours a day. I went home to Seattle for awhile, and came back with the two sweet kitties whom I've been missing more than anything else.

None of this is relevant to my post, of course, save the part about being unable to blog midweek for awhile. I meant to, at one point. I made a delightful red kale and golden beet salad, but I never actually got around to typing up a post. Such is life.

So now that life is settling down, I bring you a smoothie. Because I am a fan of fruit, and you should be too.

Oh! And it's evil, I mustn't forget to mention. (My goal for the week, you see, is to use my powers for evil.) Clearly it's evil, as none of my ingredients were sourced even a little bit locally. Well, I guess the cantaloupe comes from Mexico, and I am closer to Mexico than I used to be. But honestly - it's not even the same country. None of them are from the same country as me, none are from the same country as each other, and none of them are in season. HA! How's that for evil?

(Please, though - somebody, stop me from coming up with all these ridiculous names for things.)


CANTACOCO SMOOTHIE

fresh young coconut (they look like... well, see below)
small-medium ripe banana
1/4 small-medium cantaloupe

This (above) is what a fresh young coconut looks like. The white part is just a fibrous cover over the round coconut (like the ones you may be used to seeing), and it was taken out of a big green thing, which you probably will never see. Fresh young coconuts are full to the brim with clear liquid, which tastes like cool, sweet, refreshing water. The flesh is white, and soft and a little jellylike - unlike that of mature coconuts (the round ones with the brown hairy husk). Most of the ones you find in stores are from Thailand, and mine was no exception. They are at Asian markets and some natural food stores, and perhaps normal grocery stores, but I wouldn't know.

1. Get into your coconut. Take a sharp, large knife (I prefer to use a standard-sized chef's knife) and shave the fibrous part off the top of the coconut. You'll have to go around shaving bits off in a circle, but it should take you about 30 seconds total.

2. Hold the coconut in one hand, and take your knife in the other and tap the sharp heel of your knife (hard) all around the top of the coconut in a circle.



This is not difficult, because the weight of the knife does most of the work. You don't have to grip the handle super hard or anything. But you will have to hit it kind of hard. Experiment until you get the right amount of pressure. You should hear it crack when you get in.



3. Carefully pop off the top, and there will probably be some liquid that spills out. It should be super full.



Pour this liquid through a strainer into some kind of container. It's ok if little fibers get into it. You'll never notice them. If you're super anal about that kind of thing, you can strain it through a coffee filter or paper towel.



4. You should have a coconut and a top of a coconut. Use a spoon to scrape out all the flesh into another container. This is easy peasy. When you're done, take care to remove the hard bits of shell that may be clinging to some of the white flesh. A little bit of brown stuck to it is fine, but no hard bits.



5. YAY! You are done with that bit. Now you can cut up a cantaloupe quarter, as shown.



Remove the seeds from the center, and then cut once down the middle (like you were cutting it into two long slices, but don't go through the rind), and slice it many times across, then run the knife around underneath everything. Ta da! Another 30 seconds.

6. Put all the coconut flesh, half the coconut water, the cantaloupe, and a sliced up banana into a blender. Or, if you don't have a blender but have a wand blender, into a bowl.



I wasn't sure if I wanted the whole banana or the whole quarter cantaloupe, so I only added half of each at first. But then after blending and tasting, I decided to add the rest. And then I blended again. You should just add it all the first time and blend once.



It's a pretty simple breakfast smoothie. If you like, you can add some plain yogurt to it. I like it as is. It's not as thick as some smoothies, but I don't care. If you want it thicker, and colder, you can pre-cut and freeze the cantaloupe and banana ahead of time and blend them frozen into it. But whatever you do, don't add ice.

I like this smoothie, (and other smoothies using the same model), because it doesn't taste like watered-down under-ripe fruit. It tastes strong. Strong and good.

Speaking of strong fruit, maybe some day I'll make a smoothie with durian. If you haven't had durian, be sure to try it. Another Asian market find... just make sure you don't open it in a less-than-well-ventilated area. Outside is best.

Enjoy your exotic fruiting.

Shadow Cupcakes

There's more than one way to celebrate a birthday.

So long as it includes cake, of course. You can have layer cake, sheet cake, angel food cake, chiffon cake, cheesecake, coffee cake... or cupcakes... and really, even if you don't like cake, you probably like cupcakes. Who doesn't?

My mom always wants the same kind of cake for her birthday: what she calls "shadow cake," which is chocolate cake covered in vanilla buttercream and drizzled with dark chocolate ganache. She likes it made with Duncan Hines Devil's Food Cake mix. Hahahaha. No.

Unfortunately, I have yet to master the art of devil's food cake from scratch that is a) dark, b) rich, c) moist, and d) fluffy (aka not dense). And since I don't use cake flour, the going is even tougher. But I make wonderful chocolate cupcakes, that are proven popular to her palate, so this year, I did that instead. And they're vegan, to boot (which nobody seems to care about, since rarely do I feed them to vegan people). Complete credit for just about everything I used goes to Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero for the masterpiece Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World. That is a book worth getting for anybody that makes cupcakes, vegan or not.


SHADOW CUPCAKES

"Your Basic Chocolate Cupcake" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World
"Fluffy Vegan Buttercream Frosting" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, only I used butter instead of margarine and cream instead of soymilk, and cut the recipe in half (nobody was vegan, and we already had butter, so why not? it's less processed anyway)
"Quick Melty Ganache" recipe from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World

1. I can't tell you exactly how to make these cupcakes. But I'll sort of walk you through the basic steps, if for no other reason than to show you that it's easy. You really should get the book.

Anyway, like many a baked good, you start by preheating your oven and preparing your pans. In this case, line a muffin pan with cupcake papers. A word to the wise: even the neatest, brightest-patterened papers will be lost to chocolate cupcakes. You just won't be able to see them. Foil liners work well, or plain liners. I used these nice parchment ones.

2. Then you want to curdle your milk/soymilk with some vinegar for a few minutes. After 10 minutes or so, put it in a medium bowl with some oil, sugar, and vanilla.



3. Get ready your dry ingredients. Flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. You can sift it all together, and then whisk it up. Or, what may be better (but I haven't tried) is to whisk it up first and then sift it together. This part I like, because it looks like cake mix. Heehee. It kind of is, too.



4. Take the wet ingredients and beat them up good with a whisk. It should get good and foamy.



In two batches, add your dry ingredients to your wet ingredients. In the first addition, stir gently to mostly incorporate it. When you add the rest, you can whisk it nicely until it just looks like batter. Not super lumpy batter, but don't beat it to death, either. 10 seconds of whisking heartily should do it. There should be no dry pockets.



5. Put it in your liners, which should be ready, if you've done the thing properly. It works awfully well to have an ice cream scoop with a release mechanism on it, so you can portion out roughly 3 tbsp of batter per cup. But if you don't, gently pouring it or using a small ladle should work fine. If you get some on the pan, just get it with your finger and have a taste. Try and clean messes off the pan before you bake, especially ones between the pan and a liner, because it will be very tough to get the cupcake out intact if there's stray, unbound cupcake between the liner and the pan. It acts as a nice adhesive.



The top of the batter should be a little ways from the top of the liner. Try and get them relatively even.

6. Pop in the oven and bake for a reasonable amount of time. Take them out when they're done (do the toothpick test on the largest one. This is where having a good oven comes in handy. Cheap, old, and no-good ovens like to see-saw their temperatures around when you're baking, causing the cupcakes to become confused and fall either in the oven or just after you've taken them out. Fortunately, cupcakes with chocolate seem less prone to this problem, and my mother has a good oven.



It's ok if they're a little domed, but they shouldn't be all muffiny on top, lest some schmuck calls them "muffins." If someone calls your cupcakes "muffins," do not give them one.

7. Cool the cupcakes in the pan on a wire rack 10 minutes, and then on a wire rack naked but for their papers until they're room temperature.

Taking them out of the pan can be tricky if you're a novice. I start by gently turning them with my fingers. If they turn easily, they are not stuck and will be easy to remove. If they don't, then I gently pull the sides away (again, with my fingers, or a knife if you're brave) until they can turn. Keyword: gently. And then, deftly grab the sides of the top with your fingers, pull it straight out and pop it right into your palm (the less time you spend holding the top and not the rest of it, the less likely the top is to come right off). Put it straight down on the rack (liner side down). Be careful with metal liners, they're hot. And the whole thing may take some practice; I certainly got a lot of practice picking up hot, just fried donuts and dunking them in toppings when I was a baker at Mighty O Donuts. The worst thing ever is to pull off the top and leave huge, awful fingerprints in the sides. Do not do this.

8. After (and only after) the cupcakes are cool, make the buttercream. I almost always use the recipe from Vegan Cupcakes when I make buttercream, which is equal parts of shortening and non-hydrogenated margarine (I used non-hydrogenated shortening and butter, in this case, because I had some), beaten together with sifted powdered sugar added, with a little bit of soymilk (I used cream, as it gives it just a little lightness, when you beat, it that I like). You beat it a few minutes until it's fluffy but not lumpy (if you beat it too long, it gets lumpy). And then, if you have a pastry bag and a neat fat spiky tip, load it up :)



9. Pipe a swirl on each cake. I start at the center, straight out to the outside, in a circle coming around back to the center again. But you can do it however you want. Or just spread it on, which tastes just as good but doesn't look as fancy.



When you're done, they'll all look kind of the same. This part actually only takes about 30 seconds (for all the cupcakes put together).



10. Make your "shadow" part using dark chocolate and cream. Heat up the cream first, and take it off the heat when it's steaming and stir in chocolate. Keep stirring until the chocolate is melted. You may then put it in a baggie with the teeniest bit cut off the corner. You can also use another pastry bag with a small tip. It's a bit too thick to drizzle with a spoon, and if you try it might just land in large glops and destroy your nice piping work.

Depending on how fast you are making cupcakes, it shouldn't take you too long. Maybe 2 hours start to finish. They actually cool quite fast, provided their wire rack is not sitting atop the oven the whole time.

And watch out for cats. They'll eat your work. They'll eat it right out of the pan; right off the rack. My suggestion is to put it in a cabinet to cool, or atop the refrigerator if your cats are old and relatively infirm and/or incapable of jumping up there. Unless you want to watch it cool, which is an option as well, but no promises that your cats won't eat your work while you're looking at it, too.