Baking Shenanigans. Master Degree.

First up!
As of this afternoon, I have been officially accepted into GRADUATE SCHOOL!
WOOOOOO!

To be honest, I was convinced that they would pass on me. I had no academic references (only professional) and my GRE math score was abominable (like, I'll cringe for the rest of my life when I think of it), but somehow those things didn't really come into play.

What I'd really like to say though, is that even if your academic plans veer slightly off track (i.e. having a baby), you can always go back to school and commence with kicking school's ass.
So now you know, and knowing is half the power. G.I. Joooooe...

...ahem

There was a good amount of random baking experiments this week.


Lemon Meringue Experiment, Take One.
As I'm trying to rework my pie, I threw one together with diced strawberries in the curd.
I do not recommend.

It wasn't a complete disaster, but the strawberries added too much moisture to the filling and the results were creepy and tart. Also, since I'm not accustomed to making just a single pie crust, I wound up leaving out half of my shortening and that my friends, that was the disastrous part.

Lemon Meringue Experiment, Take Two.
A few days later I needed to prove to myself that I actually can make a single pie crust, with all the shortening it deserves. So I did. This time around we only had one lemon (I usually use the juice from two), but we did have that juicy little half-breed, the Minneola Tangelo. So I used the juice from one lemon, about a 1/4 cup, and the same amount from the tangelo.
The results?

Eh....so, so?

Delicious, yes. But I was hoping for more of a blend, you could barely taste the tangelo. I'd really like to tinker with the recipe more, especially since the Minneola Tangelo is from the Orlando area (where the pie championship will be, geography points?) but we're running out of patience and tooth enamel. We'll just have to wait and see.


*By the way, that lemon meringue pie image is definitely not mine. I'm still without my card reader and I've come to the realization that camera phone pictures of food do not look appealing, in any way. Unless you're in really great natural light, which I am obviously not.

Cheers!