I love cream pies - not meringue, which I don't love, but cream...mmmmm... (except chocolate cream but that's another story). This recipe from Real Simple magazine for lemon cream pie has been in my file of recipes to try since April 2012 - 'bout time I tried it right? So glad I did, this turned out really good and I will definitely add this to my recipe book and make again. I used Meyer lemons from my friend Sheryl so the pie wasn't super tart lemon-y, everyone at dinner liked that it wasn't overly lemon-y tho...if you don't have Meyer lemons just use regular lemons and you'll probably get a stronger flavor that I bet is equally delish. My lemons were super juicy and it only took 3 of them to get 1/2 cup of juice.
I love the gingersnap crust, was tempted to just buy a graham cracker pre-made one but am really glad I didn't - the gingersnaps made an almost chewy/crisp crust that is SO good.
I crushed up the gingersnaps in a ziplock bag using a rolling pin to roll over the cookies till they became crumbs. These gingersnaps are seriously crunchy and it was harder to get them broken up than I expected. If you have a food processor I recommend using that instead of doing it yourself. It works doing it by hand but you'll have to keep at it for awhile - um, a little tip, make sure your ziplock bag doesn't break open while you're crushing it. Just sayin'. The crust got really brown in the oven during the first baking session (note I baked it for 15 minutes instead of the 16-18 called for), so I covered the edges with foil for the last 20 minutes of baking and it was perfect.
I just looked at the recipe and reviews onine (I made it from the magazine page and didn't check for the online recipe until now so I can link it for you instead of typing it all out here!) and see that some people had issues with the crust. When I took it out of the oven after the first 15 minutes it was quite puffy and shrinking down on the sides a little bit - I carefully took the back of a spoon and patted it down and pushed it back up on the sides to shape it how I wanted. This worked just fine and after I put the lemon filling in it held it's shape for the final 20 minutes of baking.
Speaking of meringue - lemon meringue pie always makes me think of my grandmother and my brother. My grandparents were health nuts WAY before it was cool to be a health nut (I'm talking a lazy susan full of vitamins they took everyday, making her own yogurt, my grandpa walked miles everyday - people in town would say to me "oh, your grandpa is that walking man?"). We were visiting one day and my grandma offered us lemon meringue pie she had just made and my brother got super excited "oh boy, that's my favorite, I want a big piece please!" and took a huge bite. Did you guess where I'm going with this? Yep, she left out the sugar on purpose to make it "healthier". I can still see the look on his face - priceless. True story :)
click here for the recipe - not my grandma's sugar free one, the yummy delicious cream version! Ha!
Looks amazing!
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