Assessing My Mid-March 2020 Lemon Meringue Pie

The lemon meringue pie I prepared Sunday 3/15 (Ides of March Day) is a followup to my pie I wrote about in "Assessing My Christmas 2019 Lemon Meringue Pie". I'd considered making it 3/14 (Pi Day), but maybe a bit too late for adequate cooling before serving.

Christmas 2019's "Room for Improvement" Reminders

I revisited parts in the "Room for Improvement" section to remind myself for the next pie try.

Reminder 1: The filling color was less yellowy than I expected.
Action: To make the filling more yellowy, I added 6 drops of yellow food coloring into the freshly prepared pie filling.

Reminder 2: The meringue was maybe too thin in a couple of areas near the crust edge.
Action: To avoid post-baked pie showing gaps at filling, I slathered the meringue more thickly near the pie edge.

Reminder 3: With so much time for the pie to cool and set, consider the pie to be a 6-hour process.
Action: After baking the meringue-covered pie, i cooled it for about an hour, then put it in a cake-taker into the fridge for about 4 hours more. (Too little cooling time, and the pie doesn't firm up for clean cutting.)

Reminder 4: Each time after cutting into the pie, I need to cover with plastic wrap, pressing out air from cut areas.
Explanation and action: This info referred to my Christmas pie's "weepiness" (wateriness), which occurred all four days of cutting and serving, dabbing the excess fluid between days. Wrapping after 3rd day cut/serve seemed to help prevent much weepiness for the next day. HOWEVER, this newer pie had weepiness issues all four days, even as I had plastic-wrapped each remainder portion. More about pie weepiness later.

This Pie's Good

The filling coloring came out nicely lemony looking. The meringue baked prettily and showed no gaps into the filling. As expected, the pie tasted yummy! I left plenty of time for pie cooling. As for Reminders 3 and 4, they're related to one major misstep, maybe two.

This Pie's Bad and Ugly

The weepiness (both bad and ugly) was a major disappointment. I went over my links from the Christmas pie article. Based on a couple of items from "Lemon Meringue Pie & Tips for Beginners", two actions I took contributed greatly to the liquidity (good for financial assets, bad for lemon meringue).

** Misstep: I had let the pie filling cool off before pouring it into the baked pie shell. I should not have squeezed in a non-pie task during the pie-making process. Future: Ensure no interruptions for future lemon meringue pie projects.

Advice from Meringue for Pie section:

Please make sure your filling is piping hot, fresh from the saucepan, when you pour it into the shell and add the meringue!! The filling has to be hot because the steam will travel up through the egg whites and cook the meringue from the bottom. If the filling has cooled, when the pie goes in the oven, the heat will heat up the filling and the steam will get trapped between the filling and meringue, creating a watery layer that causes the top and filling to separate.

** Misstep: I used plastic food wrap.

Advice from from Pie in Oven section:

When it’s browned to your liking, pull it out. I would let it cool for an hour or so before serving, but this is one of those pies that tastes best at room temperature on the same day it’s made. If it doesn’t get eaten all in one day, put it in the fridge loosely covered with foil. Plastic wrap will create too much moisture.

** Possible misstep: One other stage of the pie making that might have affected the pie quality. The pie shell had been zipper-locked in the freezer for a few months. When I brought it out to thaw in preparation for baking, I noticed a few hairline splits in the dough. Patched them with a few small loose dough lumps. After baking the shell, I noticed more hairline splits. I decided to use the shell anyway.

Room for Improvement

Overall project process: Consider the process to be a mission! Ensure no time breaks or interruptions.
Specifics:

• Try using a refrigerated pie shell that unrolls onto a pie pan, then fork-prick it and bake as instructed.
• Be sure the pie filling is hot when pouring it into the cooled and baked pie shell.
• For covering leftover pie, use aluminum foil, not plastic food wrap.

Future Pie

I have another 3 tablespoons of a 15-ounce bottle of lemon juice to use up. I'll consider making the next lemon meringue pie around April Fool's Day, Good Friday, Easter, May Day, .... My Room for Improvement section will help guide me.

This Pie's Title

I'd been thinking about making this pie for awhile, as the remaining pie shell didn't fit well in the freezer. However, other distractions and tasks kept surfacing. On Pie Day (3/14, aka 3.14), by the time I thought about making it, it was already mid-afternoon, a bit late for enough cooling time.

Sooo, maybe the next day? After also pondering Ides of March, March Madness, St. Patrick's Day, and Middlemarch for March significances, I decided on mid-March as a reasonable nod to calendar timing.

Some bites of March info:

• "A number of things to know on Pi Day" explains pi as a mathematical term and celebration of the number on March 14, along with the tasty edible.
• "Why beware the Ides of March?" has a lot to say—not good, depending on POV of knifers and victim.
• National Geographic's "St. Patrick's Day" provides an overall view of the holiday.
• "March Madness explained in 2 minutes" is helpful for a short explanation of fanmania over college basketball.
• "Middlemarch" has nothing to do with March, but is a story about a fictitious town in the middle of England.