**A Desperate Attempt at Making a Lemon Meringue Pie**

I'm only running this recipe for a limited time, so get them while you can! I've been experimenting with different pies and have come up with a vinegar pie that's perfect for summer. It may not be the real thing, but it's a great alternative when lemons are scarce.

**A Lesson in Cooking Time**

My vinegar pie took a lot longer to bake than what was instructed. The recipe said 20 minutes, but mine took about 40-45 minutes to test for doneness. I checked the temperature of my custard cake by checking if it reached 165 degrees, and I'm not sure how solid this pie is going to be. I think where I might have gone wrong was when I cooked my custard over a double boiler, as instructed. Instead, I cooked it until it was thickened, which made it take longer to set.

**The Result: A Pie with a Jiggle**

Even though my custard didn't set perfectly, the meringue topping looked beautiful at first - white and golden on the tips. Unfortunately, after baking for an extended period, my meringue turned out to be more like peanut butter, weeping all over the pie. I've never cooked a custard pie with a meringue topping before, so I guess you could say my inexperience showed.

**A Taste of Lemon**

Let's give this pie a taste! Cutting into it reveals that the crust feels solid, while the filling is jelly-like. But the smell of lemon is unmistakable, reminiscent of lemon yogurt - my favorite flavor as a kid. I used to love adding my own fruit to make it more interesting.

**The First Slice: A Challenge**

Cutting into this pie was like tackling a puzzle. The first slice can be the hardest to get out, and mine was no exception. But finally, I managed to extract a piece without too much trouble. The custard is still quite runny, but I think it would have set better if I'd cooked it longer over the double boiler.

**Tasting the Vinegar**

When you take your first bite, you taste all that lemon extract, which is an artificial lemony flavor - exactly like lemon yogurt! It has a pleasant, fake lemony flavor that's similar to what you get when you have lemon-flavored yogurt. And of course, because this pie has a half cup of vinegar in it, there's a noticeable sourness at the end, similar to lemons but not as bright.

**A Lesson Learned**

The meringue is still light and fluffy, with a nice textural contrast - although I think it would have been even better if my custard had set more solidly. The crust is great, too - nice and flaky, with a fine crumb that's perfect for a lard-based pie crust.

**A Desperate Attempt at Success**

What we've made here is essentially a lemon meringue dupe, when you don't have lemons on hand. And it's not bad! It may not be the real thing, but when you want something sweet and special, you can make vinegar pie. I hope you guys enjoyed this little experiment, and please let me know if you'd like to see more desperate pies in action - hoosier pie, cream pie, sorghum pie, molasses pie, chess pie... the list goes on!

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: engreetings my beautiful lovelies it's emmy welcome back to another episode of hard times where i explore recipes from times of food scarcity today i'm going to be continuing with my desperation pie series and i'm going to be making a vinegar pie now if you missed the first desperation pie which was for hot water pie i will put the link above and down below now this recipe is going to come from this cookbook which was very graciously sent to me by carol carol thank you so much for sending this to me this book was written by her grandmother it is called the pioneer cookbook ruth concludes a little bit of history about herself she spent most of her life in kansas and in this book she includes so many very interesting recipes so hints for home comforts very interesting soot tea treatments for constipation bad breath tapeworms how to dry out your boots very practical advice how to fix cracks in your floors how to make a simple disinfectant free foods this is very interesting to me cattails ground cherry poke weed running of the mallow there's a recipe for pemmican which i've also made you fancy that video also put the link in the description as well so the recipe that i'm going to be making today comes off of this page and it's for vinegar pie and i'm also going to be using this one for the crust so vinegar pie also known as a desperation pie or make do pie were often made when fruits were not in season so if you didn't have any fruit you made do and you use something that you had in the pantry which included vinegar or cream or milk so in my last desperation pie video i got a lot of comments saying that doesn't sound very desperate that has eggs in it and butter but 100 years ago you raised your own chickens and you had a cow so those things were not so difficult to get i'm going to use this pie crust recipe right here it's called the good pie crust and i already blind baked that so let me walk you through the steps of how i prepared that so in a large bowl you're going to sift together one half cups of flour quarter teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of baking powder and then you're going to take one third of a cup of lard you're going to add that to the dry ingredients and then using a fork and i cut that in there until it has the texture of cornmeal next you're going to add in a quarter cup of cold water and i did this a tablespoon at a time slowly kind of incorporating that until it forms a dough then you're going to roll your dough out i like to roll mine out between two pieces of wax paper that way i don't have to use any extra flour so this recipe says it's enough crust for two pies but i found when i divided it in half it was a little bit small for my nine inch pan so i end up using about two-thirds of the dough so roll it out really thinly place into your pie dish so i like to roll under the excess dough to kind of thicken up the edge of the crust and if you like you can go ahead and crimp it so because this is a custard pie and we don't want a soggy bottom pie we're going to blind bake the pie crust and take our pie crust and we're going to use a piece of parchment paper and then dump in a bunch of beans or pie weights and then put it in a 350 degree oven and bake it for 15 minutes after 15 minutes we're going to remove the beans and bake it for additional 12 minutes at this point the pie crust shouldn't have much color to it it should just be kind of set now we are ready to make the custard first we're gonna do is separate our eggs i've got three eggs because we're making a meringue i don't want any egg yolk contamination in my egg whites so i'm going to break my eggs into a separate bowl here and that way if the yolk breaks i won't contaminate everything so yolk's there white's there this is my favorite way of separating eggs just with my impeccably clean hands and then i'm gonna go wash my hands got my yolks in there and we're going to beat these until they're nice and thick now i'm adding one cup of sugar one cup of sugar three tablespoons of flour and a third of a teaspoon of salt mix thoroughly we've got two cups of boiling water we're going to add this slowly because we don't want to scramble our eggs so just a little bit to kind of temper them half a cup of cider vinegar there we go we're going to cook it over hot water until thick and smooth thick and smooth what does that mean not for sure okay so we've got a little bay marie here a little hot water bath and we don't want the bottom of the bowl to touch the water and keep stirring this until it thickens you want to stir this constantly again we don't want any scrambled eggs our custard is thickened it's about as thick as the sauce you can just run your finger through it and it cuts right through it so now we're going to add our flavoring that's going to make this from vinegar kind of stinky pie into lemon make dew pie we're going to add one teaspoon of lemon extract because right now it's yeah it smells not so great oh and suddenly it smells like lemon jello yay and it really does mask that vinegar smell although if you get up close you can still smell it okay so i'm going to let that cool a little bit and now we're going to prepare our meringue topping so we're going to take the three egg whites that we reserved and we're going to beat this into a meringue with three tablespoons of sugar here we go by the way this process happens faster if your eggs are at room a temperature okay let's continue so now we're going to fill our pie with our custard oh yes fits perfectly and now we're going to top it with our whipped up meringue now if we want to get fancy we could you know pipe this but we're pioneers aren't we so we don't need to pipe this so we're gonna just float this right on top oh my goodness then we're gonna bake this in a low oven 325 degrees for 20 minutes then let it cool completely before we taste it get my meringue distributed here bye bye see you in 20 minutes by the way what do you think of my new shirt eat the ducky moss of course that is the auto translating of the phrase itadakimasu which in japanese means give thanks let's eat and yeah i thought it would make a fun shirt if you want to get one i'll put the link down below and you can get one they're only running for a limited time only for the next two weeks so get them while you can and look stylish in summer all right lovelies here is my vinegar pie and i have let it cool in the refrigerator now this pie took a lot longer to bake than what it was instructed it said 20 minutes and this took about 40 minutes to test for doneness you can check the temperature of your custard cake by checking the temperature so once it goes about 165 degrees you know that it should be set so mine took a very long time it said 20 minutes in the instructions mine took more like 40 45 minutes and even as this is cool this has some jiggle to it so i'm not sure how solid this pie is going to be so i think where i might have gone wrong is when i was cooking my custard over my double boiler it said to cook it until it was thick and i think what i did was i cooked it until it was thickened so if you decide to make this recipe make sure you cook your custard longer than i did and cook it until it's thick rather than thickened and then it will probably cook in the 20 minutes rather than the 40 minutes so after 20 minutes my meringue topping looked absolutely beautiful white and kind of golden on the tips but because i had to bake this longer now my meringue looks a bit like peanut butter and it's weeping and i think that's because my custard is very wet underneath i've actually never cooked a custard pie with meringue topping before so yeah my inexperience shows doesn't it at any rate let's give this a taste let's cut into this thing oh oh yeah that feels pretty jelly although the crust feels solid oh i can smell the lemon it smells a lot like lemon yogurt which was my favorite flavor as a kid by the way lemon yogurt that's what i always got always lemon yo play actually it was a toss-up between lemon and strawberry those were my two favorite yogurts these days i never get lemon yogurt it's always plain or vanilla and maybe strawberry if i get a flavor maybe usually i like to add my own fruit anyways i digress okay let's get the slice out all right let's the first slice is always the hardest let's see if we can get it out oh i think it might oh yeah oh yeah look at my custard so clearly my custard needed some more time to cook although i think if you cooked it over the double boiler longer perhaps to this consistency once it baked for another additional 20 minutes it would probably set up a lot better than this but yeah i think it'll still taste good though anyways live and learn itadakimasu oh i definitely taste the vinegar at the end initially when you taste it you taste all that lemon extract which is an artificial lemony flavor it tastes exactly like lemon yogurt it has that pleasant fake lemony flavor that you taste when you have lemon flavored yogurt and of course because this has a half cup of vinegar in it this is sour as well similar to what you expect if you made a lemon meringue pie but at the end i can definitely taste the vinegar that kind of funky zingy vinegar bite it's sour enough sour as lemons but it doesn't have that bright sourness it's not bad mhm the meringue is very nice it's light and fluffy slightly sweet nice little textural contrast although i think that would be even better had my custard been cooked better a little bit more set a little bit more like say a lemon bar in texture i think that would be really great crust is great nice and flaky and light so even though my custard didn't set the crust at the bottom is really nice and flaky it's not soggy a fine crumb and that's a lard based pie crust it's quite nice i like that so basically what we've made here is a lemon meringue dupe when you don't have lemons you just use vinegar and for what it is it's not bad it's certainly not the real thing and you can tell it's not the real thing but when you want something special something sweet you make vinegar pie alrighty i hope you guys enjoyed that one i hope you guys learned something let me know down in the comments if you want to see more desperation pies like a hoosier pie a cream pie a sorghum pie i believe there's a molasses pie there's chess pie let me know down in the comments below alrighty i hope you guys enjoyed that one i hope you guys learned something please share this video with your friends follow me on social media like this video subscribe and i shall see you in the next one toodaloo take care bye bye that was like a little sneaky one\n"