Home › Pies › Lemon Pie with Granola Crust
Lemon Pie with Granola Crust
Crust.--To 1/2 cup granola add sufficient milk to moisten it slightly. Turn it immediately into a pie tin, and with the back of a spoon spread and press it evenly over the bottom and sides of the tin. Bake until dry. Filling.-- 3/4 cup sugar 1/4 cup flour 2 tablespoons lemon juice 3 eggs 1 1/2 cups hot water 2 teaspoons oil A few grains salt Beat together two egg yolks, and one whole egg, the sugar, flour, lemon juice and grated rind, and salt. Add the boiling water. Cook in a double boiler until thick. Pour into the baked crust.
Beat the whites of two eggs stiff, and fold into them three tablespoons sugar and spread on top of the pie. Brown lightly in the oven.
A sanitarium-style lemon pie built on a pressed cereal crust rather than pastry. The crust is the part that needs attention: it is a crumb shell held together by nothing but moisture and heat, so how firmly you press it decides whether the pie can be cut.
- Press the crust hard, and bake it dryAdd milk a teaspoon at a time — the granola should be damp enough to clump when squeezed, no wetter. Pack it firmly up the sides with the back of a spoon. The recipe gives no temperature or time, only "bake until dry"; a moderate oven of about 350F for roughly 15 minutes, until it smells toasted and feels dry to the touch, answers that. An underbaked shell will collapse into the filling.
- "Granola" is not the modern breakfast cerealHere granola means the Battle Creek product: baked whole grains ground coarse — wheat, oats and corn in various formulas — plain and unsweetened. Modern granola with oil, honey, dried fruit and whole nuts behaves quite differently. Crushed plain zwieback, dry whole-wheat rusk crumbs, or unsweetened toasted rolled oats ground coarse are closer to the intention.
- Oven temperaturesThe recipe names no temperature for either stage: the crust is baked "until dry" and the meringue "browned lightly." As modern equivalents, a moderate oven of about 350F suits the crust; for the meringue, 350F for 12 to 15 minutes gives a more stable, better-cooked topping than a fast browning, while 425F for 4 to 5 minutes, watched closely, gives the quicker colour the wording implies.
- Temper the eggsWhisk the hot water into the egg-sugar-flour mixture in a thin stream rather than all at once, or the whole egg will set in threads before the flour can thicken it. Then cook in the double boiler, stirring, for a good 8 to 10 minutes after it thickens so the flour loses its raw taste.
- The oilTwo teaspoons of a bland oil takes the place of butter here — sanitarium cookery avoided butter in many dishes. Beat it into the filling with the other ingredients before the hot water goes in.
- Lemon rindThe method calls for grated rind though no quantity is given. The zest of one lemon suits this amount of filling, and the two tablespoons of juice is roughly what a single lemon yields.
- YieldOne 8- or 9-inch pie, six modest servings. It cuts best once fully set and cooled, and is best eaten the day it is made; refrigeration softens a cereal crust quickly, but an egg filling should not be left out for long stretches.