A lifetime of crying meringue woes… SOLVED!

Lemon Meringue [SWISS = SUCCESS] Pie!!

I’ve always loved being in the kitchen, trying new recipes, learning new cooking and baking methods, finding new wine pairings… and the Coronavirus certainly made that a bit easier! Working from home, no daily commute, no overnight traveling for work, all leaves a lot more time to experiment.

A particular weakness of mine has ALWAYS been lemon meringue or key lime pie, either in ANY form! I could eat lemon meringue pie all day,EVERY day. Yet, I struggled for YEARS with my meringue. I tried EVERYTHING but it just sobbed its broken little heart out. I tried completely cooling the lemon custard before piling up the meringue, yet it still cried itself to sleep at night, every single night. I tried the supposedly magical cream of tartar and after swirling the meringue into perfect little peaks, its gigantic alligator tears just kept silently slipping out.

WHY couldn’t I make The Cheesecake Factory’s mile high meringue at home? WHY couldn’t I bring the meringue of every Parisienne patisserie home? WHY did meringue always defeat me? I’ve tried store brand eggs, expensive name brand eggs, local farm fresh eggs, my own free range raised eggs. I tried cold eggs, room temp eggs, room temperature separated and immediately used eggs, even room temp separated, re-chilled and then re-acclimated to room-temp eggs (prob not the best idea, but I was desperate!) I tried EVERYTHING.

One time in a complete fit of pique, I whipped up a batch of meringue with ONE DOZEN jumbo egg whites, AND cream of tartar, AND cooled everything entirely first, sculpting my colossal pile on ONE 9” pie…. I still woke up to a deflated, barely one and a half inch tall meringue. WHERE DID my eggwhites go?? I was DETERMINED to have a tall meringue left after the bout of crying …. And yet, a full dozen whites later, I STILL got nothing.

Sometimes I am my own worst enemy. Sometimes, I already HAVE the answer and I’m soo busy trying to figure OUT the answer that I just don’t stop and LISTEN to myself. Ergo the lifelong Meringue Challenges.

A few weeks back during the Corona lockdown, when all things were still and quiet, my jumbled thoughts coalesced then slipped right out. Turns out, the answer to my sad, little meringues might have been right there in my head, the whole time.

There I was, sitting at the table, thinking of all the yummy goodness I was going to make and bake over the weekend, it just slipped out. Here I am thinking of vegetables, sauces, beef, chicken, fried rice and out of NOWHERE it hits me. The Cheesecake Factory – Italian at its heart…. Bakeries in Paris – French…. Was I on to something here? Italian, French, Meringue… all words that belong together… wait… Italian, French and Swiss Meringue…. I know I have heard something about a Swiss Meringue… was that a cookie? What was that, but more importantly… WHAT do the Europeans do differently to make their meringues so wonderfully fantastic?

Yes, I sometimes do embarrass myself with my SOMEtimes COMPLETE misfiring in my brain…. Two seconds and about 20 keystrokes on Google – in my haste, I had a typo and needed to delete and retype, and BOOM! I see all these results with the words Italian, French and Swiss in front of them. The first hit I quickly skim, the second, the third and down the list I go. A VERY real possible solution to my woes.

Here’s where the REALLY REALLY embarrassing part comes in… My grandmother used to make something that my mother makes, that I MYSELF make and that I have written down in recipe books for my children. Everybody loves it. It’s called “Seven Minute Icing”. But in my defense, it goes on CAKES. It wasn’t called Seven Minute Lemon Meringue Pie topping. It was/is ICING…. And Icing goes on cakes. Period. Or shortbread cookies but I digress.

I think this is where I admit that said grandmother was Czechoslovakian. A country that during its sovereign existence was situated in Europe, south of Poland, east of Germany and France and northeast of Italy. A country, and family, that prepared meals with a heavy Italian leaning.

I KNOW how Seven Minute Icing is made. I have MADE Seven Minute Icing my entire life. I’ve made Seven Minute icing with my kids and my grandkids. I KNOW how it behaves and I KNOW the handful of ingredients that go in it – egg whites, sugar, vanilla and a smidge of corn syrup.

Now see, I believe it was that infernal corn syrup that tricked my brain into forgetting all about this magical Seven Minute ICING when ruminating over all my lame attempts at meringue. I blame that corn syrup for forgetting just how wonderfully firm those TWO egg whites and sugar turned out. I blame the corn syrup for forgetting how light and airy and TOTALLY sliceable that icing was. Well, that and – I REPEAT – it goes on CAKES, NOT pies and it goes on thin and then turns into that wonderful crisp ‘crust’ after it cools.

If I had been connecting all the dots in my brain, I would have realized that the answer to my lifetime of meringue woes was in my misfit brain the whole time. My own heritage had given me the answer long ago but I wasn’t seeing the forest for the trees.

Saturday morning, I started my experiment in earnest. I mixed up a pie crust and worked it into my tart pan. Then I tried my hand at a new homemade lemon custard… This was a much better recipe than my old one, but I had the heat a lil too high and even though the others didn’t mention it, I could taste the egg lurking in my lemon custard, meh. So watch your heat!

Then I moved on to my meringue experiment – I opted to try the Swiss version instead of the Italian. The main difference in the two varieties is that the Swiss use the double boil method for a sugar and egg white mixture whereas, the Italian method uses just the sugar and water, then slowly drizzles that heated mixture into the egg whites.

A short time later… all my Meringue woes were a thing of the past, completely laid to rest peacefully in my history. The compliments, the ravings and the undying love professed… icing on top of my cake, or sliceable meringue on my pie I should say!

CHECK BACK!!

RECIPE WILL BE UP VERY SOON!!