I lost track of the days: Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving turned out very well. I knocked out 5 recipes in one day: Roasted Turkey, Green Bean Casserole, Coconut Cream Pie (the graham cracker crust was a recipe by itself), and Strawberry Chocolate Meringue (another pie).

The turkey was pretty easy, I just didn't like having to baste every half hour. The green bean casserole is also very simple. Honestly, I don't like it that much. The only reason I made it was because it was so simple, and it is a Thanksgiving classic. The coconut cream pie is another easy one, but I'm not so good at graham cracker crusts. It turned out more like coconut cream dip with graham cracker crumbles.

The strawberry chocolate meringue was a different story. It is a pie, but the crust is meringue. The filling is a chocolate mousse that is topped with strawberries and then a chocolate drizzle. The meringue was quite an adventure. The first attempt at meringue failed due to three possible factors: #1-I dropped a small amount of yolk into the egg whites. I wanted to just throw it away and start over at this point, but Adam wanted to "experiment", so we proceeded, even though I thought it was doomed from the beginning. #2-the eggs were not at room temperature. I'm not sure how much this would actually affect the meringue, but after we started, I found a hint in the cookbook that suggests using room temperature eggs for meringue. #3- I don't think we added the sugar gradually enough. We beat that meringue for quite a while and it never would hold a peak. I think it the combination of all three factors caused the failure of the first meringue.

The second attempt at meringue worked out very well because there was no yolk in the egg whites, the eggs were room temperature by this point, and we added the sugar very gradually. But after we had a perfect meringue, we then had to somehow form it into a pie crust shape, which was not an easy task. I left that one up to Adam, and he did very well. The filling wasn't too hard, but when I put it all together, I didn't think it looked very pretty, mostly because I was inexperienced with the drizzling of the chocolate glaze. It ended up looking like I just dumped it on top. Despite it's appearance, it was delicious.