A Lemon Meringue Pie for Sylvia Plath from ‘YummyBooks'

Every week, we’re spotlighting a different food blogger who’s shaking up the blogosphere with tempting recipes and knockout photography. Below, Cara Nicoletti of Yummy Books (and author of the new literature-inspired book of stories and recipes, Voracious) makes a “damn good lemon meringue pie” in honor of author Sylvia Plath, who made a “damn good” one as well.

Photos: Cara Nicoletti

Sylvia Plath holds a particularly special place in my heart, because her childhood home was directly across the street from the house I grew up in. I spent many long hours staring at the window I imagined I was her bedroom. It seemed incredible to me — unbelievable — that such a simple box of a house, with its white clapboard siding and shiny black shutters, could have contained a mind so enormous.

Plath’s journals are full of passages concerning her writing — rejections, anxiety, writer’s block. I was feeling guilty about the fact that Plath’s torment made me feel slightly better, until I realized that she’d admitted in her journal to feeling exactly the same way while reading Virginia Woolf’s diaries. In the passage, Plath has just bicycled into town and picked up some groceries for various baking and cooking projects, and she begins to worry that seeking solace in the kitchen and becoming too domestic will lessen her abilities as a writer:

Loaded my black patent leather bag with sherry, cream cheese (for grammy’s apricot tarts), thyme, basil, bay leaves (for Wendy’s exotic stews — a facsimile of which now simmers on the stove), golden wafers (such an elegant name for Ritz crackers), apples and green pears.

I was getting worried about becoming too happily stodgily practical: instead of studying Locke, for instance, or writing — I go make an apple pie, or study the Joy of Cooking, reading it like a rare novel. Whoa, I said to myself. You will escape into domesticity & stifle yourself by falling headfirst into a bowl of cookie batter.

Reading the journal of Virginia Woolf makes her feel instantly better, both about her culinary escapism, and the recent rejections she has received from various publications.

And just now I pick up the blessed diary of Virginia Woolf, which I bought with a battery of her novels Saturday with Ted. And she works off her depression over rejections from Harper’s (no less! — and I hardly can believe that the Big Ones get rejected, too!) by cleaning out the kitchen. And cooks haddock & sausage. Bless her. I feel my life linked to her, somehow. I love her…

This is not the only passage in Plath’s journals dedicated to food — far from it. Plath writes constantly and passionately about cooking and eating. She writes of the beauty of “great ice raw oysters on their scraggly lace, blue eye peacockish shells,” “fat-encrusted pork-chops,” “cold succulent honeyed pink grapefruit,” and “shrimps hot in red sauce.” She bakes devil’s food cake and date-nut bars, fills large pottery bowls with applesauce she makes from green apples she picks herself. For lunch one day, she eats “steaming & savory fish soup… smacking good all onion-essence, chunks of soaked fish & potato steaming, hot, bacon bits, butter crackers foundering in it,” and another day freshly-shucked quahogs with lemon — “salty, gritty, but good.”

Plath’s greatest culinary triumph is her lemon meringue pie. “I make a damn good lemon meringue pie,” she says, in what is one of the most confident declarations in the entire collection of journals. The pie comes up again and again — she calls it her “trusty angel-topped lemon meringue pie,” and in one of my favorite entries says: “Baked a lemon meringue pie, cooled lemon custard crust on cold bathroom windowsill, stirring in black night stars.”

I used regular lemons for this pie. It is tart and sweet and buttery, it’s damn good, if I do say so myself.

Lemon Meringue Pie
Makes one 10-inch pie (about 8 servings)

Traditionally, lemon meringue pies use a regular pie crust, but I really like the way it tastes with a graham cracker crust. We’re going to make the crust first so that we have it ready to pour the curd into. I used a 10-by-2-inch tart pan with a removable bottom, but a regular pie pan will work fine. If it’s shallower, your meringue will just be higher, which is never a bad thing.

Graham Cracker Crust

16 graham cracker sheets, cracked into pieces
¼ cup sugar
¼ teaspoon salt
1 stick plus 2 tablespoons butter, melted

Pre-heat your oven to 350°F. In a food processor, pulse your graham cracker pieces with sugar and salt until a fine meal forms. Add melted butter in a slow stream while pulsing, until the crust comes together. Mold crust evenly into tart pan, being sure to press it hard into the corners. Bake for 15 minutes, or until the crust is fragrant and the edges are golden brown. Cool in pan on a wire rack.

Lemon Curd 

Because lemons have such high acidity, it’s important to use as little metal as possible while preparing the curd. Use glass bowls instead of metal and a plastic whisk or rubber spatula. This will prevent the metallic flavor that you taste so often in lemon desserts. 

1 ¼ cups sugar
Zest of 5 lemons
Juice of 4 lemons
4 eggs, room temperature
1 packet Knox powdered gelatin (.35 ounces, or 7 grams)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened

Fill a large heavy-bottomed pot or Dutch oven half-full with water and bring to a simmer over medium heat.

In a large glass bowl that will fit on top of your boiling water vessel, rub sugar and lemon zest together with your fingers until the zest’s oil is released and the mixture becomes fragrant. Mix the zest throughout the sugar.

Add lemon juice, eggs, and gelatin to the sugar/zest mixture and whisk until fully combined.

Heat over double-boiler, whisking constantly, until the temperature of the curd reaches 179°F (82°C). Once the curd reaches temp, strain it through a fine mesh sieve into another glass vessel. Whisk softened butter into curd, and pour the curd into your prepared pie-crust. Set on wire rack while you prepare your meringue.

Meringue

5 large egg whites, at room temperature
½ teaspoon cream of tartar
Pinch of salt
¾ cups sugar

Preheat your oven to 375°F. In the bowl of a mixer fitted with a whisk attachment, add your eggs, cream of tartar, and salt and whip on medium until the eggs hold soft peaks.

Increase the speed to high and add sugar in a slow stream, beating until the egg whites are glossy and hold stiff peaks.

Assembly

Spoon meringue onto lemon curd, making sure the meringue touches the edge of the crust on all sides to create a seal.

Bake meringue in the center of the oven until golden brown, about 15 minutes.
Cool on a rack for 2 hours and in the fridge for an additional hour to be absolutely certain that your curd has set.

More delicious pies:

Gluten-Free Coconut Cream Pie Recipe

Rhubarb-Strawberry Lattice Pie

Girl Scout Cookie Cream Pie Earns All the Merit Badges