If you reeeally like lemons, you should totally make this lemon pie

So rumor has it that, when a lot of people make recipes, they write up a grocery list full of the ingredients they need for the recipe and go and buy them. Well, I’m pretty bad at that technique. I mean, sometimes one or two ingredients for an actual planned recipe will make it on the list, but in general, I’m more of a “hey, this is cheap and tasty!” kind of person when making my list and grocery shopping. My recipe method is often more of a “Hey look, I have random ingredients! What can I make?”

So a coworker had contributed several lemons to the break room at work, and, one lonely Friday afternoon, I decided the yellow bastards were coming home with me. I knew I lacked the ability to eat enough salmon to use up that many lemons, so I required a stealthier plan. A dessertlike plan that was round, delicious, and relatively easy to make. Which is how I came to choose the Shaker lemon pie.

It only calls for four ingredients:

• 2 lemons
• 2 cups of white sugar
• 4 eggs
• A crust

The intrigue, of course, is that it uses whole lemons, rind and all. The pain in the ass part is that the lemons have to be sliced incredibly thin for you to not be painfully aware that it indeed is lemon rind in your pie.

Woefully, that paring knife was not up to the challenge. But I soldiered on. The recipe called for these lemon slices to be mixed with the sugar, and to sit for at least 4 hours. To compensate for my lack of ability to slice anywhere near thin, I went ahead and let the mixture soak overnight.

Yeah, I totally kept tasting the mixture – it was like super sugary condensed lemonade. I could see taking this mixture (minus the rind, mind you), dumping it in a blender with some ice and the alcohol of your choice, and having pretty much the best blended beverage ever. And, speaking of blender, that’s what I did. Multiple people in the comments recommended blending everything up if you couldn’t get your lemons thin, so I dumped this bowl o’ sugary goodness in the blender, added the four eggs, and blended until nice and smooth.

I’m a total bum, and bought my pie crust. Sure, the ingredients to make a crust are super cheap, but my wrist muscles would have none of that. And, as it turns out, it’s still pretty cheap to just buy a freaking pie crust. Or even a two-pack of pie crusts, as this one was! Which turned out to be a good thing, as apparently I needed that additional crust to cover the top of the pie.

The recipe said to brush the top crust with milk and sprinkle powdered sugar on top. I managed to do the first one, but apparently bummed out and/or forgot about the second one. Oops! I did use a toothpick to poke holes in the top of the crust. Mostly because every pie I’ve ever made with a top crust usually says to give it some breathing air or something. I’d normally do a few slices with a knife, but that filling was doing it’s best to leak out the sides as it was, so I decided not to give it any more opportunities than it already had.

So, at some point during all of this you should have preheated your oven to 450 degrees. The pie bakes for 15 minutes at 450, then you reduce the temperature to 375 and bake for another 20-25 minutes.

Yeah, this pie was amazing. Well, if you’re into lemons. I think I’m mostly used to eating either meringues or creamy lemon desserts, so to have something a littler chunkier and tart like this was different in a very good way. I seriously want to make this for everyone I know that eats lemons. Who isn’t diabetic. Or five years old. Cause two cups of sugar is pretty intense.