Lemon Angel Pie

Lemon Angel Pie, a photo by Teckelcar on Flickr.

This year for the community Seder I wanted to make a non-chocolate dessert. Passover friendly chocolate desserts are easy, for years I've brought my flour less chocolate tort. Chocolate is easy, but it has been done to death.

So I hauled out my go to cook book for Passover, Something Different for Passover by Zell Schulman, and started flipping through the dessert pages. About two thirds the way in the section I found a likely candidate, Lemon Angel Pie. I had all the ingredients on hand and it looked easy.

Normally I would link to the recipe, but the lone version (of the hundreds of variations out there on the web) I could find attributed to her was quite different from the one I used. So here it is:

Lemon Angel Pie

Crust
1/2 cup of egg whites (4 large eggs), room temperature
1 teaspoon of vinegar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/4 cups sugar

Filling
1 1/4 cups sugar
4 tablespoons potato starch
Dash of salt
1 1/4 cups ice water
4 slightly beaten egg yolks
grated peel of 2 lemons
6 tablespoons lemon juice*
2 tablespoons of butter or margarine**

1. Preheat oven to 250 F. Grease a 9 inch pie plate.

2. With an electric mixer, beat egg whites at medium speed until they are frothy. Add vinegar and vanilla and turn mixer to high. When eggs begin to hold a soft peak or  whn you see lines from the beaters in the egg whites, begin to add the sugar, about 2 tablespoons at a time. Beat thoroughly after each addition. Continue until all the sugar has been added and the egg whites are very stiff and glossy.

3. Spread the meringue into the pie plate, building up the sides and leaving the center flattened for the filling. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on cake rack for 1 hour.

4. While the meringue is baking,*** make the filling. Combine sugar, potiao starch, and salt in a medium saucepan. Gradually add ice water. Stir in egg yolks, lemon peel, and lemon juice. Cook and stir over medium heat until bubbly. Boil only one minute- no longer!

5. Remove from heat and stir in butter.margerine. let cool 15 to 20 minutes.

6. Fill meringue shell, and garnish with toasted coconut or toasted almonds.****

* I didn't bother to measure, I just used all the juice from the two lemons.

**I used margerine since the Seder was a meat meal.

***It's better to make the filling as the meringue is cooling.

****I skipped the toppings.

The pie is delicious and was a huge hit. One gentleman thanked me for using real lemons. The only thing I might change is to cut back a bit on the sugar. The pis is very much worth making.