For years my Mother had a reputation... and fair ribbons to boot... for the best lemon meringue pie in Northern California. Her secret???... apart from her famous crust, was she made them with Meyer lemon!! It is one of the main reasons I am a Meyer lemon grower today.... that and the fact that whenever my children or my grandchildren came to her house, the first thing they did was go out to the Meyer lemon tree and start eating the lemons.

I've had excellent results with this one. You can substitue a baked regular pie shell for the Almond Crumb Crust if you like: COCONUT CREAM PIE WITH ALMOND CRUMB CRUST Almond Crust 1 1/2 cups vanilla wafer crumbs 1/3 cup finely ground blanched almonds 1/4 cup packed brown sugar 1/4 tsp nutmeg 5 TBL butter, melted 1/4 tsp almond extract Combine all ingredients & pat the mixture evenly onto the bottom & up the sides of a greased 9" pie plate. Bake in a preheated 400° oven for 8 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool. Filling: 2 cups milk 1/2 cup sugar 1/4 cup + 1 TBL cornstarch 1/2 tsp salt 2 egg yolks, beaten 1 TBL vanilla 1 TBL butter 1 cup shredded or flaked coconut Scald the milk in a large saucepan. Mix together the sugar, cornstach & salt in a small bowl. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the heated milk. Cook over low heat just until thickened, stirring constantly. Remove from the heat. Add a little of the hot mixture to the egg yolks & stir to combine. Return to the suacepan along withe the vanilla, butter & coconut. Cook over medium heat 3-4 minutes, stirring. Remove from heat; cover the mixture with a sheet of waxed paper or plastic wrap placed directly on the surface so the filling won't form a skin. Cool, then chill 2 hours or more. Pour the filling into the pie shell. Topping: 2 cups heavy cream 1 tsp vanilla 1 tsp sugar Combine the cream, vanilla & sugar. Whip until the mixture forms soft peaks. Spread over filling.~~ From Heart of the Palms.

roselvr, do you make the Company Cheesecake from the BH&G cookbook? That's our "old reliable"... back when my dad was teaching he and I would bake twenty or so of them every Christmas for the other teachers and a very few other very lucky people. I much prefer their shortbready crust to the more common crumb crusts. I need a new copy of the OLD big book - the red plaid binder - mine's gone walkabout and they messed around with the recipes in the new version. (Did the same thing to Joy of Cooking. Irritating.) I broke the spine on the paperback in about six places ages back, it's held together with packing tape! Pie for breakfast was a staple at Grammie's when I was a little kid. No half and half though. Slab of apple pie with a hunk of "rat cheese" (very sharp cheddar) on the side - Gramp liked apple best for breakfast, other kinds were for dessert - with "Navy coffee" you could just about stand your spoon up in. (I once had a version where they tried to bake the cheese into the pie. It was vile.) She made terrible crust though. You could hurt someone with the "bone", the bit around the rim. Then she decided to go all "healthy" and the delicious breakfast pie disappeared in favor of a bowl of Wheaties. *mourn* golddust, I do so hate to disagree with you, but I've had enough people insist "oh, I just can't stand that store-bought pie crust", mumbling it around a mouthful of pie... made with that very product. *chuckle* About the third time it happened I decided not to waste precious energy on making piecrust anymore (when you have 4-6 usable hours in a day, you take your shortcuts as you can)... My mom makes kick-@$$ pie crust - perfect texture etc. - but she also smokes heavily so all her baked goods have a strong overtone of "ashtray" to the flavor. We usually give them away to friends who smoke who won't notice it. Oh! I forgot Oatmeal Pie. It's an old Amish/Mennonite recipe, IIRC. It makes a chewy-crisp top sort of like an oatmeal cookie and underneath that is a layer like the gooey part of a pecan pie. As I said above, many of our friends are allergic to nuts, so this is what I bring to a lot of wintertime potlucks as a "replacement" for pecan pie. 25 or so people will wipe out 2 or 3 10" pies and leave other desserts untouched. LOL I used to love making fancy desserts, but they are usually too time consuming for my limited time budget and our friends don't really appreciate them anyway. They'd rather have the simpler, homier stuff.

Exactly my thoughts.... MUCH too beautiful to eat. -Browning is aided by the addition of a sweetener and/or milk. -Xanthan gum, vinegar, and baking powder are ingredients that will help extensibility to help prevent cracking. -The addition of tapioca flour and/or cornstarch in a recipe will improve handling. -I wonder if using the coconut oil that remains a liquid would make a difference? Carrington Farms Coconut Cooking Oil (I find it at Wal-Mart) has a lot of uses in the kitchen where you want the coconut oil to remain liquid, and this pasty recipe may be one of them. -I found recipes that mist the pie tin with oil, and then mist the crust with oil just before baking. This may help prevent cracking, but it would also add a lot of fat and possibly make a greasy crust. -An egg wash would give it some strength, and that may help. Here's a crust recipe from "Gluten-Free 101" by the queen of gluten-free - Carol Fenster, Ph.D. (link to her web site is below). Coconut Pie Crust: Grease 9-inch pie plate. Combine 1-1/2 c. shredded coconut, 2 T. soft butter or margarine, 1 T. sweet rice flour, 1 t. vanilla extract, and 1/4 t. salt. Press onto bottom and up sides of 9-inch pie plate. Bake at 325-degrees F. until lightly toasted -- about 10-15 minutes. Watch carefully to avoid burning, Cool thoroughly. Add filling of your choice. Serves 6. Nutrition: 160 calories; 12g fat; 1g protein; 14g carbohydrates; 43mg sodium; 0mg cholesterol; -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: Carol Fenster Cooks