Blood Orange Curd Meringue Pie with Shaved Dark Chocolate

PIE-A-DAY #34

Jennifer Evans Gardener runs Little Feet in the Kitchen Cooking School. In honor of Pie-a-Day, she baked a pie with her campers.

My students, age 6-12, and I made a delicious batch of blood orange curd during cooking camp and had the idea of turning it into a blood orange curd meringue pie with dark chocolate shavings. You might think that those flavors were too sophisticated for kids, but you would be wrong! They devoured the pie, and a new recipe was born. We hope you like it as much as we do!

Blood Orange Curd Meringue Pie with Shaved Dark Chocolate

Created by: Little Feet in the Kitchen Cooking School

Crust:

1 cup unbleached all purpose flour

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, cold, cut into pieces

2 Tablespoons sugar

Pinch salt

2-3 Tablespoons ice cold water

Process flour, butter, sugar and salt in food processor for a few seconds. Add butter and with machine running, drizzle enough cold water into mixture until a ball of dough forms (this will just take a few seconds). Refrigerate dough for 45 minutes.

When ready to bake crust, roll out dough on floured surface and line 9-inch pie pan with dough. Put pie weights at the bottom of it and bake at 400 degrees until just golden, about 8 minutes. Let cool while you make the filling.

**Lower oven temp to 350 degrees (to bake meringue pie in).

Blood Orange Curd Filling:

1/2 cup blood orange juice

1 Tablespoon lemon juice

3 Tablespoon cornstarch

2 Tablespoon flour

6 egg yolks

3/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature

Combine blood orange juice, lemon juice, egg yolks, flour, cornstarch and sugar in a medium saucepan. Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly, for 8-10 minutes until sugar has dissolved and mixture has thickened.

Remove from heat and stir in the butter a little at a time, stirring to fully combine. Pour filling into cooled piecrust.

Meringue

4 egg whites at room temperature

1 pinch cream of tartar

2 Tablespoons sugar

Place egg whites and cream of tartar in the bowl of a stand mixer. Beat egg whites with whisk attachment until soft peaks form. Slowly add sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form, approximately 1 to 2 minutes.

Spread meringue over the top of the blood orange curd filling, making sure that the entire top of the pie is covered.

Bake for 10 minutes, or until the meringue is a light golden brown.

Take pie out of oven, let cool for at least ten minutes. Shave curls of dark chocolate or blood orange zest over the top of the meringue and serve.

Enjoy!!