Happy Pi Day! A Creamy Lemon Pie Recipe

I've said it before, I'll say it again:  I LOVE PIE.  Any excuse to make pie is a good one, and celebrating pi day (3.14, get it?) is a particularly good excuse.

We still have...oh...a few thousand lemons on the tree in our backyard, so I thought it would be a good idea to try a lemon pie recipe.  But as much as I love lemon, I don't like lemon meringue pies.  It's the meringue part I don't care for.  Mushy, uncooked egg, not my thing.  But this recipe makes a smooth, tangy lemon pie on graham cracker crust (yum!).  And topped with a layer of stabilized whipped cream, it's a cool, creamy, dream of a pie.

Creamy Lemon Pie Recipe

Crust:

• 2 cups graham cracker crumbs
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 2 T brown sugar

Pie filling:

• 1 can sweetened condensed milk
• 2 large eggs
• the zest of two lemons
• the juice of two lemons (approximately 1/2 cup)
• 1/2 t salt

Whipped topping:

• 1 cup heavy whipping cream
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 1 t instant clear jel (optional)

First, you need to form your graham cracker crumb pie crust.  This is insanely easy, but you could certainly buy a pre-formed graham cracker crust from the grocery store.  Simple combine the graham cracker crumbs, butter, and brown sugar together in a bowl, and mix until all the crumbs are moistened.  Press into a pie tin.

Next comes the lemon filling.  In a bowl, beat two large eggs until light yellow and foamy (I used two gorgeous fresh duck eggs from my friend Katie at Brighton Park).  Add lemon juice, lemon zest, salt, and the sweetened condensed milk, and mix until nicely combined.

This pie makes a nicely lemony, but not tart filling.  If you want to amp up the lemon flavor, try adding a couple teaspoons of King Arthur's Lemon Juice Powder, one of my secret weapons for baking amazing citrus treats.

Bake at 350 for 15 minutes, and let cool completely.  Once cooled to room temperature, pop the pie in the fridge to chill.

I let my pie chill overnight.  Today, when I was ready for my Pi day pie, I whipped up my whipped topping.

The whipped topping is pretty much just whipped cream.  The instant clear jel is used just to stabilize the whipped cream, so it will remain a little stiffer than usual, and won't weep and separate as the pie sits around for a few days.  If you're going to be serving this pie immediately, and anticipate serving it all at once, it would be just as easy to use straight-up whipped cream.  

So light, so creamy so tangy--I love this pie!  What a perfect way to celebrate March 14th.

Just a little amusement particularly appropriate for today.  I found this sourced only as an uploaded pin on Pinterest, so I don't know who to credit, but I love it!