I've been searching for the perfect lemon meringue pie.

I've made maybe two dozen lemon meringue pies in the past two years. More lemon meringue pies than most people taste in their lifetime. Certainly far more than most people make. Pity. Lemon meringue pie is not only fantastically delicious, it is also quite easy.

I found my favorite meringue recipe maybe two pies back. It is from America's Test Kitchen baking cookbook. Except that I 1.5 or 2x the recipe (depending on how many stray egg whites I have floating around my refrigerator) and I always add extra vanilla. It tastes fabulous and has an excellent structure. Love.

I have yet to find the perfect lemon pie filling.

I was THIS close last night. (I have this odd habit of baking in the morning on fast Sundays when I don't go to church until the afternoon. Can't eat? Guess I'll just have to bake lots of delicious food. Yeah, doesn't make much sense to me either.) My pie was so close to perfect my mother fairly begged me to take a picture of it before I cut into it. Unfortunately, I couldn't find my camera. You'll just have to picture the perfectly browned tips and whorls of the meringue.

I looked up Alton Brown's recipe for lemon meringue pie. It was probably the best tasting lemon meringue pie I have ever made. There was only one problem: it didn't set up.

Picture this. A perfect triangle of meringue on top of a beautifully flaky pie crust (courtesy of my little bro), drizzled with all of the lemon stuff that was supposed to be between the meringue and the crust. Yup. It set so badly that it was drizzleable.

But it was still delicious.

Also, I might start advocating always cutting pies into six pieces. Biggest, most delicious piece of soup-pie I've ever had.

I think with a little tweaking (as in getting my pie stuff to stay in the pie shape it's supposed to be), I might just have the perfect lemon meringue pie.