Explosive

My dear celiac friend Cady recently made a special request. Cady, as you may recall, was the gracious donator of my delightful dresser. Her reward for this generosity was these gluten free peanut butter cookies. Although she did enjoy the cookies, this time she was hankering after a more intricate treat she had recently experienced: gluten-free strawberry meringue pie. She assured me that this was a real thing and, indebted to her as I am, I signed on to assist with this project. She invited me to her lovely (and admittedly quite compact) home one night, asking only that I bring lemon curd, as she had no idea that such a thing existed. Well, it turns out the entire mission district has no idea that lemon curd exists. I searched high and low before asking god (read: my iPhone) for advice. Alton Brown's recipe for lemon curd appeared simple. I purchased the necessary lemons and butter and trudged on to Chez Cady and Joseph. After a brief moment of gawking at the hipster mob in front of Cady's apartment waiting to eat at Mission Chinese Food restaurant, I rushed upstairs and we set to work. "So," Cady said with utmost confidence, "I just picked the first recipe that came up on google. Also I hate recipes." I assured her that I would have done the same, and that I too found recipes to often restrict my creative tendencies. I glanced through the one she had found and determined that we would have to do some tweaking. After another glance, I decided that we were going to make our own recipe. For an alternate and perhaps less drawn out and tiresome summation of events, see Cady's blog:

Cady and Marissa Have a Little Too Much Fun Inventing This Gluten Free Strawberry Meringue Pie Recipe

Adapted from some places

Crust Part

- about 1 cup crushed gluten free graham crackers (not too shabby, I might add), crushed with a rolling pin or some other crushing device

- 4 tbsp melted butter

- scant 1/3 cup sugar

Filling Part

- two containers strawberries, sliced (about 4 cups)

- 5 egg yolks

- 1 cup sugar

- 4 lemons

- 1 stick butter

Meringue Part

- 5 egg whites

- a pinch of cream of tartar

- 1-2 tsp vanilla

- some sugar?

First, make the crust. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Mix together the crushed graham cracker crumbs, butter and sugar, then spread into a pie dish. This made a somewhat low crust, so if you want more crust, add more of each ingredient (proportionally, derr). Bake for about 10 minutes then remove and cool. 

Next, make the lemon curd/filling. Zest and juice the lemons. The recipe said to use only 1/3 cup of lemon juice, so I only used juice from about 3 of them. Prepare a double boiler set up: this can involve a heat resistant bowl and a saucepan. Fill the saucepan with about 1 inch of water. Bring to a boil, then reduce to simmer. In the bowl, mix the egg yolks and sugar (I might have mixed the juice and sugar first, which might have affected the thickening of the curd, and by affected I might mean prevented. Do as I say, not as I do). Pour in the lemon juice and zest and place the bowl on top of the saucepan. Whisk until mixture thickens (Note: if it does not thicken, tell me because it means it was the recipe's fault and not mine). Remove from heat. Mix together the strawberries and "lemon curd" substance (if the "lemon curd" is extremely runny, maybe just add a little and not the entire thing). 

Next, make the meringue. Use electric beaters to whip the egg whites to soft peaks. Once they reach soft peaks, add the cream of tartar, vanilla and sugar. Note: not much sugar is required. We just threw some in and it turned out tasty. 

Lastly, assemble and bake. Decrease the oven heat to 325 degrees. Pour the strawberry mixture into the pie crust. If it looks very wet (which it did), throw in some gluten free flour and mix. This may or may not make a difference. Scoop the meringue mixture on top of the strawberries. Place a baking sheet under the pie dish and bake for 20-30 minutes.

 

Final note: our pie ended up erupting all over poor Cady and Joseph's oven. When we removed the pie to cool on top of the stove, it continued erupting slowly and steadily for a good 15 minutes before juice started spilling out each and every opening in the oven. This was because we put too much liquid and stuff into the pie. Woops. It was still delicious and provided the inspiration for C and J to make strawberry meringue pie oatmeal the next day. Tasty!