I couldn’t get through an entire month of lemon things without making at least one pie. This is not, however, the lemon pie you are expecting. There is no meringue involved; just sugar, eggs, whole lemons, and pastry.
Any time whole lemons are involved, there is the potential for the food to end up bitter. So the key to a Shaker Lemon Pie, according to everything I read online, is to make sure you slice the lemon very, very thin, and you give those slices lots of time to macerate in the sugar. LOTS of time.
So this morning I sliced up 3 lemons as thin as I could, then tossed them in a bowl with the sugar, and left it to sit all day. This evening, I made the pie crust, then finished up the filling, and popped the pie into the oven. A couple hours later, after it was baked and then thoroughly chilled, we gave it a try.
You can see bits of the rind peeking out. And please look at that crust. This is the first time I have made a pie crust that actually came out nice – not only in taste, but in appearance. Yay, perhaps the long, dark night of pie crust woe is finally over!
But I digress. How was it, you ask? Really, really good. The filling borders at the edge of too sweet… until you get a little sliver of the rind to even things out. It’s definitely a rich tasting pie – I wouldn’t want more than a small piece at a time – but I could definitely see making this again.
Lemons used: 3
Total lemons this month: 45
Making a lemon thing a day for Thingadailies.