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Joke Pie
Butter some paper-clean white preferred. Invert a pie tin on it and cut out a circle a little larger than the tin, say 11/2 inches larger all around. Cut the paper into the required number of portions, as if it were a pie. Fit pieces together in pie tin and there you have your crust all made. Proceed from here and construct an ordinary lemon meringue pie. Make the lemon filling in a saucepan or double boiler (see recipe) Fill paper crust with filling and top it with a meringue that you can brown or not, depending on whether you have an oven or reflector oven. Cut your pie in portions that match the paper sections underneath, and lift out the slabs just like any other pie. The illusion makes a great hit. 2 CUPS FLOUR
A camp trick rather than a dish: the crust is buttered paper, cut into wedges so the "pie" lifts out in neat slices. The filling and meringue are real, so the cooking that matters happens in the saucepan.
- The hinge: cut the paper before you fillThe wedges must be cut and fitted into the tin dry, with the points meeting at the centre and the outer edge riding up the side. Once filling goes in, the paper cannot be cut without tearing, and the illusion depends on each slab lifting cleanly.
- "11/2 inches" is one and a halfTrace the inverted tin and cut a circle about an inch and a half wider all round, as the recipe specifies. The surplus is what covers the sloping sides of the tin.
- What paper to useParchment is the modern choice: it is greaseproof, food-safe and stands up to hot filling. Waxed paper will soften and shed wax under a hot lemon curd, and printed or recycled paper has no place against food.
- Brown the meringueThe recipe treats browning as optional, which leaves raw egg white sitting on the filling. Set it under a reflector oven, a broiler at high heat for two or three minutes, or a torch until the peaks colour; alternatively beat the whites over hot sugar syrup so they are cooked before they go on.
- Reflector oven, if that is what you haveA reflector oven stands open-faced to the fire and browns by radiant heat. Turn the tin from time to time, and keep the pie back from the flames -- meringue scorches long before it sets.
- Chill before cuttingThe recipe does not specify what goes into the filling, but a lemon filling needs to be cool and set before the slices will hold their shape. A warm pie will slump off the paper and give the game away.
- YieldA standard 9-inch tin gives six to eight wedges; cut the paper into that many pieces from the start, since the joke rests on the portions matching.