Yesterday was my wife’s birthday. For the occasion, I shook off my laziness and baked her a lemon meringue pie. It was a semi-success. The taste was perfect. However, the pie crust did not turn out well. I made a special crust because my wife and I wanted her daughter (my step-daughter) to be able to have the pie. She can’t process gluten so the usual kind of crust would not have worked.

So I’ve used a crust recipe we’ve often used in the past for making another kind of pie. That’s the problem, in its original context that crust works perfectly but for a lemon meringue pie, it does not work. When the time came to eat the pie, I found that the lemon filling had weakened the crust. I know the crust was fine before I put the lemon filling in. Lesson learned: don’t use the crust for a heavenly silk pie to make a lemon pie.

I also over-whipped the meringue. Not a disaster by any means but it was so stiff that I could not make any nice waves or peaks on top of the pie. Oh well. Tasty anyway and my wife enjoyed a good home-made pie.