Grace visited her aunt last week and brought back DOZENS of fresh lemons from her tree, so Jennie and I decided to make lemon meringue pies for everyone. Coming out of the oven, they looked perfect!
We both did a lot of googling before starting, in attempts to thwart common meringue pitfalls: weeping, shrinking, and beading. Our efforts were futile because as the pies cooled, ALL those things happened!
Weeping is when there's a layer of moisture between the lemon filling and the meringue. This can happen because the filling is too cool when you spread on the meringue. It's also due to undercooking.
Beading is when tiny droplets form on the meringue's surface as it cools. This is caused by OVERcooking!
Shrinking is when the meringue shell separates from the crust. This is caused by the filling being to HOT when you spread on the meringue.
Okay . . . so the filling was both too hot AND too cool; we somehow simultaneously overcooked AND undercooked the pies . . . meringue is so temperamental!
After more googling, I learned that humidity and coarse sugar can also cause those meringue washouts, both of which we have aplenty. The sugar here is like white gravel!
The nice thing is, the pies still tasted really good. I didn't get any pictures of the weeping, beading, and shrinking because they were gobbled up pretty promptly.
I also tried making challah bread from scratch. Due to the heat and humidity, the braided loaves rose out of control! They not only rose, they SPREAD, too!
They started out as 2 little braids, each about the size of a 1 liter Nalgene. They each had a good 3 inches around them on all sides when I left them to rise. Cindy said they looked like two thick legs with cellulite. Haha!
When I baked them, they grew even MORE! They were STRANGE-looking, but really airy and chewy. I'll try to make normaller-looking challah next week.
Comments (3)
man meringue pie sounds TOUGH! so easy to over/undercook =\
but wow those look REALLY good!! guess baking runs in the family? =)
hahahahahahahahaha!!!!
i love baking adventure stories! your lemon meringue is quite impressive--that it can be all those things at once. and good job on that super challah! i LOVE challah!!! did i ever take you to Village Mill Bakery where they have chocolate chip challah... ooh, i'm going to miss that. what recipe did you use? i want to make challah too!
@Indee500 - you told me about that chocolate chip challah, but no, you've never taken me. I used this recipe. It was miiiiiighty tasty!