When I was still living in the home where I grew up, my mother often made Angel Pie for my birthday. I loved it more than any cake, though her chocolate cake with toasted walnuts sprinkled on top was a close favorite. Angel Pie has no pie crust in it. That is made of meringue and baked separately. Then one makes a very intense lemon filling, and last whips up a lot of heavy whipping cream. They are layered and chilled.
When I talked to Alice about what she would like me to bake for her birthday, she confessed that she didn’t really care for cake that much. We both recalled the Angel Pie I made for her 17th birthday in Budapest during our 92 sabbatical. (I remembered that it had been impossible to find cream of tartar in Hungary. No one understood what I was talking about, though I did finally discover the name is tisztított borkő, which means “cleaned wine stone”, the purified mineral deposits left on the inside of wine barrels. Actually Potassium bitartrate.) However, I made Angel Pie without that stabilizing help and it was just fine.
Yesterday I made it for Alice and was a bit overwhelmed with the enthusiastic response. I used the recipe from The Joy of Cooking, but added a little of the whipped cream into the lemon filling. There are many online recipes. Alice took a photo with her phone. It’s actually a picture of the last piece. Andy has requested it for his birthday in June.
what a wonderful cake, baked with memories and stories of your family.
Wow! I’d never heard of angel pie, and my mouth is watering!
I am not the lemony type, so I guess your mother’s chocolate cake with toasted walnuts would have been my favourite – you could have had my piece of angel pie if I could have had yours of the chocolate cake 🙂
Hmmmm…love lemon and this sounds wonderful! It had to be a hit if it has already been requested for the next birthday.
This is my kind of pie! I looked up the Joy of Cooking recipe online, so I am all ready to go. Even have a bag of lemons waiting to be used. Thanks!