Lemon Merengue Meringue

I made my dad a lemon meringue pie for his birthday as it's his fave pie, and he already had a birthday cake a few days before.

One of the reasons I don't cook dinner every night or bake more often is because my kitchen is tiny, and the amount of counter space I have is a joke. At left is what my kitchen ends up looking like about five minutes after I start to cook anything.

The recipe I used for the pie is the lemon meringue pie recipe listed on the back of a box of Kingsford Cornstarch, although the box I have is a few years old. (Do they still even sell it in boxes? Their Web site doesn't seem to offer it. Which sucks. Why does everything have to come in plastic these days? Isn't a cardboard box cheaper to manufacture?...ANYWAY.) I didn't have a pie tin, though, so I just bought some frozen pie shells that come in pie tins in order to kill two birds with one stone. Also, because of the lack of counter space thing I mentioned, rolling out a pie crust is a real pain in the ass. Well, even more of a pain in the ass than it normally would be.

I think it came out quite good. A lemon meringue pie can be ruined by too much sugar, and I thought this one had a good level of tartness to sweetness, especially since I increased the amount of lemon zest the recipe called for (used about two lemons' worth instead of one). In all, it's a pretty easy pie to make, as long as you aren't a Luddite using a hand whisk instead of an electric mixer. It also helps to have an electric mixer like mine, which goes from a speed setting of "Holy Crap!" to "OMFG! That's Dangerous!"