Desserts

Unpasteurized cheese and creamy scrambled eggs: stuff we don’t eat on this side of the pond but probably should. To this add our current item, coffee granita with whipped cream. If we weren’t so uptight we’d have all of the above and more on the menu. At least with the coffee drink, the issue isn’t health but rather lifestyle: it’s not a Starbucks venti iced latte; you need to sit and chill in a café watch the passersby and eat this sucker with a long spoon and maybe a cookie or a good roll. Let me know if you see this happening anywhere in our fair country.

Basically, this is an adult milkshake: crystal-crunchy, icy coffee lightly sweetened and layered with unsweetened whipped cream. Unfortunately, given the scarcity of streetside cafes and gitanes, that leaves us with two options: AM or PM. AM is no good; granite and whipped cream seems a little much; PM would be okay, except it’s more of an after-dinner, later in the evening drink, which means a 10 PM shot of caffeine, not something I prefer.

But it’s very refreshing and slightly rich, and therefore deserves some respect, so when to eat (drink). I recommend a weekend afternoon. Sunday, preferably, if only because that’s when the newspaper is fattest. Kick up your heels with a glass and a spoon, read about Linsanity and enjoy.

(NOTE: The recipe makes a ton of granite, which lasts about 3 days; scrape now and then. You could easily make half the recipe, but it’s only coffee and water so you’re not being too wasteful. We tried these out in super-small cups, almost shot glasses. For 4 servings in normal-sized glasses, you could add another cup of cream. If you have some left over, whipped cream stays in the fridge for a day.)

Coffee Granita w/ Whipped Cream

Serves 2

¾ cup sugar
2 ¼ cups water
1 ½ cups coffee
1 cup cream
dash of ground cinnamon

1. Boil the water and sugar in a pot to make a syrup. When the sugar is dissolved, add coffee. Pour into a container and freeze for several hours, occasionally.

2.   Whip the cream to stiff peaks. To serve, alternate spoonfuls of granita and cream in a tall glass. Top with cinnamon and serve.

I took our 4-year-old to a playground on Houston and Sixth for a skateboarding lesson. To anyone unfamiliar with New York City playgrounds, I suggest rewatching Sesame Street where the biggest peril I’ve seen is a tiny thwarted fire in Mr. Hooper’s store. With all that jumping and dancing, how falling and bruising isn’t more of an issue I’ll never understand.

As I’ve been learning, the Sharks and the Jets are chumps. The true playground nightmare is its unforgiving floor. It’s cringe-inducing to watch a little kid wobble on a skateboard knowing that he’ll inevitable take a pounding from the cement below his short legs. And sure enough that’s what happened when our kid tumbled off the board onto his soft hands and, tears flowing, bolted my way for comfort.

If urban cement is a kid’s worst enemy, his best friend is a cup of hot chocolate. And so we wandered down Houston to Payard’s place for their excellent version, essentially super high quality chocolate melted, presumably with cream, and poured into a cup.

As he sipped I flipped through one of Payard’s books, Simply Sensational Desserts, a welcome throwback cookbook. The dishes are all classic French items you’d expect to see in the case at, well, Payard’s: Lemon Pound Cake, Dark Chocolate Mousse Cake, Pain d’Epices, Financiers, and so on. There are even dessert soups, which I gather used to be a big deal before they dropped out of fashion.

I appreciate the honesty of these desserts. They taste as advertised: dry and wet folded together along with some sort of zest and baked. And I like that in place of pie and cupcakes, there’s a cluster of loaf cake recipes. Thus, no apple pie but apple cake. Loaf cakes have a bit of sophistication about them. You can’t order a slice of cherry loaf cake at Bubby’s: pie is a rush of sugar and fruit, often warm and served with a scoop of more sugar in the form of ice cream.

Payard’s apple cake is an adult dessert or midday/midnight snack. Not too sweet, studded with a few sturdy bites of apple and raisins and glazed with apricot jam, it’s a subtle slice washed down with a cup of coffee. While dessert soups don’t appeal, the gingered berries he uses to garnish a mango soup, are quite delicious. Lightly soaking the apple cake with the berries and their syrup elevates the dish.

Hot chocolate soothes a 4-year-old who has just been crunched by the cement of a New York City playground. A slice of Payard’s apple cake soothes the soul of an adult who has just soothed said 4-year-old.

(NOTE: the cake is actually better cold the next day.)

Apple Cake w/ Gingered Berries (adapted from Simply Sensational Desserts, by Francois Payard)

Makes 1 loaf (10 servings, depending)

1/3 cup raisins
3 tablespoons dark rum (optional)
1 cup flour
¾ teaspoon baking powder
8 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
3 eggs
2 apples, peeled and cored
Apricot Glaze
Gingered Berries

1. Preheat oven to 325. Butter the sides and bottom of an 8 ½ * 4 ½ * 2 ½ loaf pan. Dust with flour and tap our excess.
2. Bring a small pan of water to the boil. Add the raisins, turn off heat and let soften for 10 minutes. Drain, mix with rum and reserve.
3. Sift together flour and baking powder
4. In bowl of electric mixer fitted with paddle attachment, cream together sugar and butter on medium speed until light. Add eggs one at a time until incorporated. You’ll need to stop the mixer and scrape the butter from the bottom occasionally. Mix in raisins and rum. Add dry ingredients on low speed to mix. Spoon half of batter into the prepared pan and smooth out.
5. Cut one apple into 12 wedges and arrange in the batter in a line, domed sides up. Spoon the remaining batter over and level off. Cut the other apple into 8 wedges, then half those wedges horizontally and scatter over the batter, pushing in lightly so that just the tops stick out.
6. Bake cake 60-65 minutes until the top is golden brown and a toothpick inserted comes out clean. Cool cake on a wire for 15 minutes. Unmold and brush generously with the glaze. Cool completely before slicing (see note). Serve with the berries in their syrup.

Apricot Glaze

½ cup apricot preserves

½ cup water

1. Bring preserves and water to a simmer in a pan, stir till smooth and turn off heat.

Gingered Berries

1 cup sugar
1 piece ginger, about 1-inch long, sliced thinly (1/8 inch), unpeeled
1 pint berries (mixed raspberries and blackberries if desired)

1. Simmer the ingredients in a saucepan, stir to dissolve sugar, turn off heat and cool to room temperature.

Like everyone, I committed a few unwise acts in college. Not many, but a handful. Dropping stuff out a window wasn’t a brilliant move, for example. Dropping slightly heavier stuff out a window even dumber. (Don’t worry, no one was hurt.) Just after the dorm proctor barged in and barged out, we decided the solution was to “spin a web of lies”. Not wise, but it seemed reasonable at the time. Anyway, no one cared enough to investigate, and we survived.

Plagiarism, however, is another story. It’s the ultimate unwinnable collegiate act. They’ll unearth you like truffle sniffing dogs and then flay you before numerous boards until they expel you, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Lesson learned for later in life when-if you’re famous-the media will publicly humiliate you into years of shame. In the final disgrace, Oprah will then scold you (see: James Frey-lying, not plagiarism, whatever), and you’ll end up in a dark room watching Full House reruns with Bill Buckner.

More forgivable is the filching chef, pushing out a dish he read about or ate or otherwise ingested. When it comes to food, everyone copies in one way or another. You’re dealing with the senses, in particular, the sense of taste, and the senses are mostly about absolutes. Which is why we love the smell of apple pie and bacon and a good grilled steak. You may not like squid, but there are enough squid lovers out there who’ll gobble up a delicious bowl of the stuff to warrant replanting the dish elsewhere. (See our meal last night at Supper, and the tiny rings, flash fried in plenty of garlic and oil.) Technique, rather than component, is the thing.

Sometimes I commit acts of unconscious plagiarism. Like the other day when I found myself scooping tiny ice cream balls and rolling them in poppy seeds and toasted coconut. The poppy seed idea, I was reminded, came from Hasaki and the coconut from O Mai, both good restaurants in our rotation. But they’re tasty and therefore good ideas.

Probably, I’d never invent that stuff had we not ordered it; the more you see, the more you copy, which is why toddlers are the truly original thinkers. But stick them before a bunch of ingredients and they’ll make chocolate pies with melted cheese and sprinkles. So, originality in food is overblown. Better to mimic the delicious. And you don’t have to spin a web of lies.

(NOTE: ice cream has been known to melt. Either speed through this or occasionally return the pint to the freezer. You can make the truffles early, freeze, and serve whenever.)

Ice Cream Truffles Three Ways

Serves 4 as a small dessert (or use a big scoop, or cones, or whatever. It’s ice cream. Play with it.)

1 pint vanilla ice cream
½ cup poppy seeds
1 cup sweetened coconut flakes, toasted
½ cup toasted breadcrumbs, ground to a powder (brioche are the best if you have it)
Zest ½ an orange

1. Spread the poppy seeds, coconut, and breadcrumbs on three separate plates.
2. Using a small scoop, roll 4 “truffles” at a time in the poppy seeds. Roll the next four in the coconut, and the final four in the breadcrumbs.
3. Arrange the truffles in bowls, garnish with the zest and serve.

 

 

 

Raymond Blanc is French. He loves France. He loves French pastry. He loves strolling around Paris talking about French pastry. He loves making profiteroles, terrines, and soufflés. And he lives in England.

Blanc is a great chef-Michelin stars, etc.-and has been for decades, but he’s also great on television, witty, self-deprecating, in short a ham with tremendous skills. He’s unrepentantly French, but with a wink and a nod. With a sly grin, he satirizes the military provincialism of French food culture. Which is probably one reason why he set up shop in England: as soon as possible they’d toss him on the first ferry out of Normandy. Humor and French food aren’t a match made in heaven.

But Blanc can cook, which is all that matters. Check out his BBC series, especially the lamb episode. Even a simple dish like roast lamb leg is cooked in a slightly unfamiliar though convincingly proper manner, ensuring the tastiest possible end result. In this case on a bed of lamb bones. Who woulda thunk?

I chose to do his lemon tea cake for this very reason: a seemingly simple cake lifted by the tricks of a perfectionist chef. Yes, perfectionist, because he’s wry, not sloppy. Aerate, rather than simply stir the batter; glaze with apricot jam prior to the final sugar glaze; being watchful makes for a better cake.

And, true to his adopted home, he serves it with tea. In the show, Blanc jokes about this being a homey family recipe and how “it would be nice to have a little chap to make this with”. As it happens, I do have a little chap-our 4-year-old-and he sat on the counter whisking, dusting us both with a shower of flour. Blanc, the giddy expat, would have approved. Or not; he’s French, after all.

(NOTE: some of the recipe’s by weight. I could have figured out the conversions online and risked the wrath of collapsed cakes. Therefore, I suggest you do it. Better yet, get a kitchen scale. It’s a necessary piece of equipment. We serve it with a simple strawberry compote: cut berries, water, sugar, lemon juice.)

Lemon Tea Cake (from Raymond Blanc)

Makes one cake

For the Cake

5 eggs
11oz sugar
5 oz cream
3 lemons, zest only
1 ½ tablespoons dark rum (optional)
pinch salt
3 oz unsalted butter, melted
8 ½ oz flour
½ teaspoon baking powder

For the Jam Glaze

3 tablespoons apricot jam, warmed in a small saucepan

For the Lemon Glaze

1 lemon, zest and juice
5 oz confectioners’ sugar

1. Preheat oven to 350.
2. Butter a 10*3*3 loaf pan.
3. In a large bowl, whisk eggs, sugar, cream, zest, rum, salt, and butter.
4. Sift flour and baking power into a separate bowl, then whisk into the egg mixture until smooth. Use a whisk to aerate a bit.
5. Pour batter into the prepared pan and bake in oven for 50-60 minutes, turning halfway through cooking. The cake is done when a knife blade inserted in the middle comes out clean.
6. Remove the cake from tin onto a rack and let cool 10 minutes. Keep oven on.
7. Brush cake with the apricot glaze and leave for five minutes while your make the lemon glaze.
8. For the lemon glaze, whisk the lemon juice and zest with the sugar until smooth. Heat in a small pan or microwave until syrupy.
9. Brush glaze all over cake and leave for a few minutes to set.
10. 10. Place glazed cake in oven on a baking tray, turn off heat, and let warm 3-5 minutes to dry the glaze. Remove from the oven and leave to cool to room temperature before serving.

Life is about accumulation (see George Carlin’s “stuff” monologue). Beginning with a crib, a ball and maybe a stuffed monkey, you graduate to a skateboard, ipod, computer, furniture, chairs, car, etc. until you have a touch more than the neighbors.

For people with specific interests, accumulation can turn into addiction. Photographers drool through the aisles at camera stores; car lovers slink around dealerships; cooks, in near fugue state, fondle expensive knives. Like most addictions, kitchen acquisition is driven by an exquisitely seductive agent: the recipe. A few objects later-ice cream machine, blowtorch, Escoffier cookbook, stick blender, melon baller, hinged terrine mold, sous vide machine, tweezer, centrifuge, chemical mask, beaker, petri dish-and you’ve got yourself a weapons lab.

Which is how we come to our dinner at Annissa. It’s a great restaurant, an extremely tough reservation, and the only place to truly stump me. The tiny, paper-thin, crepe-like cup was both too delicate to have been popped en masse from molds and too painstaking to be individually produced. I finally beat it out of our waiter: they use a small, steel cup-shaped mold, which is welded onto the tip of a long heatproof rod. The cup is dipped into batter, dunked in boiling oil and dropped onto a tray, where, voila, a tiny pastry cup is born.

Like discovering the magician’s trap door, it was a satisfying moment: aside from the immense practice and skill, they had a secret weapon anyone could buy. The down side, you might say, is the temptation to find the nearest blacksmith, but even I realized it was a bit too obscure for even the most tricked-out kitchen.

The crisp beignets, oozing warm, salted butterscotch caramel, prompted the evening’s second query. Though this was less mysterious-we correctly guessed a post-fry caramel injection-it was, nonetheless, a clever bit of cookery and a delicious creation. Which is why, when Anita Lo’s book appeared in the mail, I was happy to see it contains the beignet recipe, and even happier to see her call for a simple squeeze bottle rather than whatever tiny injector I’m sure she uses in her kitchen.

In the end, cookware acquisition should be about the food. Which is why, if you’re blown away by these beignets and don’t have a squeeze bottle, it’s a reasonable purchase. True inspiration isn’t a common thing; if you’re blown away by Jim Lahey’s no-knead pizza dough recipe, get a pizza stone. If you’re entertained by Chef Lo’s mini crepe cups, take a cold shower.

(NOTE: she serves this with dishes of milk ice on the side.)

Pecan and Salted Butterscotch Beignets (from Anita Lo’s Cooking Without Borders)

Serves 8

1 stick unsalted butter in pieces
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
6 ounces flour
4 large eggs
¾ cup chopped pecans
1 cup packed light brown sugar
3 tablespoons butter
½ tablespoon salt
½ cup light corn syrup
½ cup heavy cream
canola oil
confectioners’ sugar

1. For the Beignets: In a large saucepan, bring 1 ¼ cups of water, the butter, sugar, and salt to a boil until the butter is melted. Remove from heat, add the flour, stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until the mixture becomes a ball and pulls away from the sides. Transfer to the bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment and mix on low speed for a few minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, incorporating each before adding the next. When all are mixed in, add the nuts and mix.
2. For the Salted Butterscotch Sauce: Put brown sugar, butter, salt, corn syrup in a small saucepan and bring to boil. Lower heat to medium-high, stir, cook until syrupy, then stir in the cream, remove, let cool then transfer to a squeeze bottle with a small tip.
3. To Fry and Serve: Heat a few inches of oil in a large pot to 375. Working in batches, spoon ¾-inch balls of batter into the oil. Fry until golden, about 5 minutes. Puncture each with tip of squeeze bottle and squeeze ½ teaspoon of the sauce inside. Dust with confectioners’ sugar and serve on a plate with the hole up so the sauce doesn’t ooze out.

 

Never trust a dessert cookbook without a recipe for apple pie. Never trust an apple cookbook without a recipe for apple pie and an accompanying essay. Since we happen to have written just such a book, I know whereof I speak.

Apple pie is, to my mind, the king of pies: warm apples are incomparably delicious. Warm cherries, pears, plums, peaches, are all very nice. Blueberry cobbler is excellent. As is peach cobbler, or warm peaches over ice cream. But apples are the ultimate pie fruit.

The ultimate pie apple is a heavily disputed matter. The Brooklyn Botanical Garden’s apple handbook devotes a chapter to pie as well as a tannin/sugar chart meant as a guide to baking the correct pie.

We have a few general rules: 1. not too soft, not too firm; 2. Not too sweet, not too sour; 3. Experiment. There are so many apples, you should try them in your pie; we like a firm/soft mix like Granny Smith and Golden Delicious.

Finally, slice them really thin. It makes for an attractive cross-section, and ensures your apples will break down.

(NOTE: You can prebake the crust if you like. Sometimes we do, but usually I’m too lazy. Use a mandoline. And don’t be afraid to slice up a lot of apples: you’re looking for a giant mound.)

Apple Pie w/ Cranberry Preserves

Makes one 10-inch double crust deep dish pie

For the Crust:

2 ½ cups flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
10 tablespoons unsalted butter plus 4 tablespoons, chilled and cut in ¼ inch dice
7 tablespoons shortening, chilled
1/3 cup ice water as necessary

For the Filling and to Assemble:

2 cups cranberries
1 cup cranberry juice
1 ¼ cups sugar
5 pounds apples (granny smith and golden delicious is a good mix), peeled, sliced
1/16 inch thin (a mandoline simplifies this)
juice ½ lemon
3 tablespoons flour
1 ½ teaspoons cinnamon
½ cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 400. Combine ½ cup of the sugar, cranberries, and the juice in small saucepan and simmer over medium heat until the liquid is absorbed and looks jammy, about 20 minutes. Let cool completely.
2. In a large bowl, combine the apples, ½ cup of the remaining sugar, 3/4 teaspoon cinnamon, flour and lemon juice. Mix well with your hands. Reserve at room temperature.
3. Remove the dough and let warm a bit, about 10 minutes. Generously flour a surface and roll to 1/16 inch, rotating ¼ turn after a few rolls. Line a 10-inch pan with the crust, layer thickly with the cranberry compote.
4. Layer the apples over the cranberries. You’ll have a very high mound. Dot with the remaining 2 tablespoons butter.
5. Roll out the second dough, drape over the apples and using a 2 inch ring mold of paring knife, cut out and remove a small hole from the center of the dough.
6. Toss the remaining ¾ teaspoon cinnamon with the remaining ¼ cup sugar. Brush the pie with milk and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar.
7. Bake on a tray for 50 minutes or until browned and bubbling. Rest for 20 minutes and slice.

For the crust:

1. Add the flour, salt, and sugar to a food processor and pulse. Dot the butter on top and pulse 5 or 6 times for a second each. Do the same with the shortening. Each time the fat should be no bigger than tiny peas and resemble coarse breadcrumbs.
2. Add a few tablespoons of water and pulse. Keep adding until the mixture just comes together. You may not need all the water.
3. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Divide in two, flatten each into a 7-inch disc and refrigerate for at least a few hours or up to a day.

My recent rant over boxed mashed potatoes concluded with a vichyssoise recipe. The point was that it can be at least as cheap and nearly as quick to cook with actual produce as with fake food. In passing I also mentioned preservatives, which of course is an issue with pouched mashed potatoes and other flaky, powdery, gummy, suspiciously instant items. I’m hardly a puritan on the issue, but there is at least one dish I usually buy but makes me feel especially virtuous when I go the homemade route: ice cream.

For homemade ice cream you need to buy an ice cream maker, which isn’t cheap, and depending on how much ice cream you eat it may or may not pay for itself, as they say. However, unless you and the family are lactose intolerant, I’m betting it does.

From-scratch ice cream is so simple and incredibly pure that even in our apartment, with the gridlock honking and Occupy Wall Street chants crashing through the windows, I feel like I’m on my very own dairy farm. Milk, cream, eggs, sugar. That’s about it.

Unfortunately, ice cream is the most preference-laden concoction I can think of. What other prepared food is sold in as many varieties and commands as much supermarket acreage? Which complicates the issue for the home ice cream maker who can go rapidly from dairy farmer to paralyzed obsessive.

And so I’m here to simplify. In my view there are two types of ice cream: with and without stuff. In other words, say, vanilla versus butter pecan. Personally, I need stuff in my ice cream, and I suspect you do too. However, the beauty of ice cream is that for the stuff and the stuffless the recipe is more or less the same. You just toss the stuff through the chute near the end of the process.

For me, ice cream requires peanut butter hence the following peanut butter and Reese’s cup version. It is delicious, but-unless I’m misreading the Reese’s package-hardly preservative free. There goes my dairy farmer illusion; right out the window…onto the chaos below.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Ice Cream (from The Ultimate Ice Cream Book by Bruce Weinstein)
Makes about 1 quart

¾ cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 cup milk
½ cup creamy peanut butter
1 ½ cups heavy cream
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup crushed Reese’s cups

1. In a medium mixing bowl, beat the sugar and eggs till thickened and pale yellow. Set aside.
2. Bring the milk to a simmer in a medium pot, slowly beat the hot milk into the eggs and sugar. Pour mixture back into the pot and place over low heat. Stir constantly with a whisk or wooden spoon till custard thickens slightly. Don’t let it boil. You don’t want scrambled eggs.
3. Remove from the heat and beat in the peanut butter. Strain through a fine strainer into a large, clean bowl and cool slightly. Stir in the cream and vanilla. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
4. Stir the chilled custard then freeze in 1 or 2 batches in the ice cream machine. When semi-frozen, add 1 cup crushed Reese’s cups and let the machine finish its magic.

Having polished off a giant platter of stone crab, I put my feet up on the table, sipped a cold beer and looked out at the Florida sun setting over the beach. I reached for the plate with its wedge of key lime pie and chewed drowsily.

And then I was nearly mowed down by a Chinese delivery guy. It was an abrupt shift into reality, which right now involved squeezing myself through paper-thin gaps between the train of cars extending from Broadway down Broome headed for the Holland Tunnel and the Jersey suburbs. Another end of a workday. Prematurely hot; hints of the sweaty city summer to come.

I was heading to day care where everyday I pick up our son.

“We’re making a pie,” I said as we crossed the street on the return trip. “Key lime. No crying. No playing. Hurry up.”

He lifted his scooter helmeted head, a bit confused, as if he had been picked up by the wrong guy. An angry pie baker.

Midway through juicing my second bag of tiny key limes, I realized the pie had to chill overnight. A devastatingly amateur but necessary recipe step. I baked the crust, filled the pie, spread and browned the meringue and popped it in the fridge. And waited.

I consider key lime pie a mother pie. The French have their mother sauces; we have mother pies, most of which seem to be associated with fall, winter, and especially thanksgiving: apple pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie. There are also spring and summer fruit pies like cherry pie and strawberry-rhubarb.

A genius creation, key lime stands alone, proudly independent. While its siblings call for assistance in the form of whipped cream or ice cream or some sort of sauce, key lime pie is an autonomous entity. Each slice provides cream, sugar, acid, and a crunchy, toasty crust. Not to mention a nice lime hue in contrast to the glum muddiness of, say, pecan pie.

The next day, I pulled it from the fridge, crunched my fork through the bruleed meringue then the soft filling, and finally the crunchy, buttery graham cracker crust. Then moved over to our window. The sun was hitting the buildings on the east side of Broadway. Down on the street sightseeing buses crawled by and the hot dog man was parked in his usual spot by the bank.

I propped my feet up on the windowsill and took a bite of pie.

Key Lime Meringue Pie (from the Clinton St. Baking Company Cookbook)

Makes one 9-inch pie

Crust:

¾ cup graham cracker crumbs
½ stick unsalted butter, melted
2 tablespoons sugar
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
Filling
¾ cup key lime juice
1 14-oz can condensed sweetened milk
4 egg yolks
zest one lime
Meringue
2 egg whites
1 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 350.

1. Mix the graham cracker crumbs and butter in a bowl then mix in sugar and vanilla.
2. Press evenly onto bottom and sides of a pie pan (the back of a spoon helps to smooth out). Bake 10 minutes. Reduce oven to 325, remove and let cool.
3. Meanwhile, whisk together filling, fill crust and bake at 325 for 8-10 minutes, until the filling is set. It may still jiggle in the center but have the firm texture of a pie or custard. Remove and raise temperature to 350.
4. Place whites in bowl of stand mixer and whisk on medium for a minute then add the sugar gradually and mix about 5 minutes till fluffy and a marshmallow consistency.
5. Use a spatula to spread the meringue over the top of pie without pressing too hard. Use it to make peaks and craters. (You’re going for a rustic look.)
6. Bake at 350 for 10 to 12 minutes until meringue is golden and crusty.
7. Chill overnight in fridge.