The Best Lemon Pie Filling Recipe - Our Wabi Sabi Life (2024)

FAQs

What is the liquid at the bottom of the lemon meringue pie? ›

Water seeping from meringue is practically always coming from the egg whites. There are a few standard things you can do to reduce it. First, do not overbeat. For some reason, recipes love to direct people to beat egg whites "to stiff peaks".

To make the filling: Whisk 1 cup sugar, flour, cornstarch, and salt together in a medium saucepan; stir in water, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Cook over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until mixture comes to a boil. Stir in butter.

The watery layer between the meringue and the filling (weeping) is usually caused by undercooking. This is where it is important to put your meringue onto hot filling so it can begin cooking right away.

How do you keep lemon meringue pie from getting soggy? It's important to blind bake the crust (partially bake the crust without the filling) before adding the lemon filling and meringue, otherwise you'll have a soggy crust.

Spread the Meringue to the Edges of the Pie: Spreading the meringue so that it touches the crust on all sides helps to seal in any moisture, and helps to prevent your meringue from shrinking as it cools.

Very often flour or cornstarch is used, but in certain instances tapioca, arrowroot and potato starch can also help achieve the desired consistency.

Some say that scattering small bits of butter over a fruit filling keeps the juices from bubbling over in the same way that adding a bit of fat to simmering jam keeps it from foaming up in the preserving pan. The theory is that the fat disrupts the formation of bubbles on the surface of the viscous fruit mixture.

Lemon curd is a spread made out of fresh lemon juice, eggs, sugar, zest, and butter. The eggs in the recipe thicken the mixture, giving it a custard-like consistency.

If your pie filling is runny, add in one additional tablespoon of cornstarch to the lemon filling, and stir over medium heat. It should thicken in 1 to 2 minutes.

If your lemon curd hasn't thickened, it may not have been heated enough. It can take up to 30 minutes of constant stirring to cook lemon curd, especially if it's a large batch. Remember that curd will thicken more once cooled. If your cooled curd is not thick enough, you can reheat it to thicken.

How to keep lemon pie from weeping? ›

As the pie finishes baking in the oven, remove it when the meringue turns light brown. Removing the meringue before it has finished cooking can cause condensation. At the same time, don't overcook it, which can also cause weeping.

Adding an extra egg gives the pie a cake-like consistency.

There was a very thin shiny top layer, but the rest of the filling was a consistent light-orange color.

My Easy No-Roll Pie Crust – pat-into-the-pan crust being another way to save time on your pie-baking. Another plus: pre-cooking the filling means it's already "settled," and you won't experience that annoying gap that sometimes develops between filling and top crust.

Meringue pies will ''weep'' water because of the interaction between the filling and the whipped meringue. If one or the other is overcooked, water beads will form and weep. Egg whites can also weep if they are over-beaten or are from old eggs. Refrigeration (unfortunately) speeds up the process of weeping—oops!

stiff peaks. beaten egg whites that stand up straight when beaters are lifted from the mixture. weep. when liquid accumulates between meringue and pie filling because meringue was spread on cool filling.

The bottom line: For smooth, stiff beaten egg whites that keep their shape, don't skip the cream of tartar. If you don't have cream of tartar, substituting 1/4 teaspoon lemon juice or white vinegar per egg white works almost as well. To avoid meringues that weep, don't skip the cream of tartar...