New Year, New Look

My blog, my rules. The pies have it, at least for now. Before the advent of the new year, I made my first lemon meringue pie, to mark younger son's being home for the holidays. I also made the usual two pumpkin pies for Christmas and was somewhat dismayed that it took almost a week for both of them to be consumed. Older son offered the excuse that Christmas morning's homemade cinnamon rolls were too filling and satisfied his appetite for sweets.

The first pies of 2013 will be served at tonight's dinner party. I am not good at hostessing such things, despite the fact that they offer a handy reason to clean that portion of the house the guests will see. Tonight's gathering is a sukiyaki dinner. Our senior kendo master instructor will do the cooking at the table. I'm doing appetizers (a vegetable tray and a cheese and cracker tray), rice in the rice cooker, and desserts. Thinking of a pie to go with Japanese food was a disaster, so I settled on key lime since it is at least a bit exotic and apple, for an American  contrast.

Here's the key lime (meringue tips highlighted by older son using a blowtorch).

 And here's the apple.

I will admit to having cheated on these in that I did not prepare the crusts for either. What with the picking up and cleaning, I opted for store-bought graham cracker and frozen crusts. The reason that the top of the apple pie looks so ghastly is that I followed the directions on the crust packaging rather than followed my instincts. The directions said to cut off the fluted edges of the top crust before putting it atop the filled bottom crust. I did despite thinking there wouldn't be enough crust there, and guess what. I was right. It was quite difficult to get the edges sealed which explains the rather large cracks. Live and learn. Next time, I will trust my instincts or make my own crust.