Meyer Lemon Shaker Pie

I have heard about the mythical Meyer lemons forever, but had never seen them with my own little peepers. Then moma told me they had them at Aldi. Oh, Aldi, we salute thee! And so I hastened over and got not just one infamous citrus, but a whole beautiful bag.

I bought them fully knowing the little orbs fate, they were going straight into a Shaker pie. Shaker as in the religious faction that also created the simplistic wood furniture that bears their name. This pie has always intrigued me. You see, you leave the peels on, as the fruits supposedly have a thinner and less bitter rind than their normal counterparts. As per normal I went though about 10 recipes before I finally amalgamated one of various parts. After writing that I just realized, I am the Doctor Frankenstein of cooking. Instead of taking a fine looking arm and a shapely leg, I take an ingredient here and a technique there. And I realized something else disconcerting. Almost every recipe had a top crust. Why, I ask you, would you cut these lovelies into paper thin slices, leaving on the golden skin, if you weren't going to admire the heck out of them before you ate it??!!

These fruit were so beautiful. Their skins were almost the orange of, well, an orange, and they smelled like one also. The juice is supposed to be sweeter than a regular lemon and it certainly was more fragrant. I sliced them as very thinly as I possibly could, discarding the end pieces and picking out the incredible amount of seeds. If these little suckers reproduced nearly as prolifically as they made seeds you would think they would be very common indeed! I put them in a bowl with sugar to macerate (using the sugar to draw out juices) the way you do berries. And then I made my decision. My pie would be open to the world. And, despite the fact that every single recipe used a regular pie crust, I was baking it in a shortcrust so that my kids would be more apt to eat it.

The filling was incredibly simple, like most very old recipes are. Butter, eggs, flour, and the macerated lemon slices with their lovely juice. It tasted delicious. (Yes, I know there are raw eggs in it, but I've been eating cookie dough and tasting cake batter my whole life.) This filling is only: 4 Meyer lemons sliced very thinly and then mixed with 1 3/4 cups sugar and 1/4 tsp salt. Let this sit for at least 6 hours, or overnight. Then combine 4 eggs, 4 Tbsp melted butter, and 3 Tbsp flour. Stir in the lemons and all the juices. The end!

 The recipe I used for the filling said it filled a nine inch pie pan. I am compulsive with pie plates the way I am most cooking items. Let's just say I have at least as many as I have fingers. Some metal graniteware, one pottery, one milk glass, and the others old Fire King. I usually bake fruit pies in a ten inch, but I tried to follow the recipe. I picked out a nine inch, and my deepest one, just to be sure. The crust is a very thin shortbread layer, but Dear Reader, the recipe fibbed.

I made sure to get every single lemon slice into the pan, but I overfilled to where I swamped my baked crust and I still had a good half cup of filling left in the bowl. Grrrr. I knew I should have gone with the ten inch!

However, all's well that ends well, and the pie baked up beautifully and the filling cooked into the crust to where everyone said it almost seemed caramelized in the pan. Okay, now for the verdict. I loved this pie. Me, my moma and pop, my middle son and a daughter-in-law all loved the pie. The others were not crazy about it. The next day when I offered a piece to the hubby I saw him surreptitiously trying to pull the slices off the top and put them to the side. When I informed him that there were whole slices with peel throughout the pie, he looked pained. This was obviously not his kind of pie, so I took it and ate it for him. One must make these sort of sacrifices for the greater good...

This pie made me think of a sticky, chewy, lemony marmalade. If you don't like the thought of the slivers of preserved skin in a marmalade then you will hate this, just warning you beforehand. It was that very texture that turned almost half of the family from it. But if you love candied orange slices, the real ones, boiled in sugar syrup and then set to harden, not the evil florescent wedges of candy that people used to thrust on me at Halloween, then you will love this. There is no in-between, sugar, it's either love or hate.

I had never had marmalade until two years ago. I grew up with the aversion to all things orange, mainly because of orange suckers, and orange flavored medicines. Just the thought of the fake orange smell made my stomach roil. But now that I am so mature, and wise (I should be seeing heads nodding out there by the score! ;) I find that real orange flavored baked goods are a delight. Take the Orange Sweet Rolls I made HERE, or the Orange Marmalade Twist Bread HERE .

This has a puckery tartness in the filling because of the juice, but then is sweetly redolent of orange in the slices. The texture is beautiful to me, and really, isn't the texture the very reason behind leaving the skins on? Lemons were a precious commodity till not so very many years ago, and this pie would have celebrated them in every essence of their being. I can't wait until the "season" returns. I hope to find these lemons again and relish this pie. Even if there is no one else to share it with, it is such a celebration of chewy golden splendiferousness that I would make it just for me!