After months of making pies and bread and cookies to pay my rent, I realized that a few a my customers look at making their own food like it's rocket science, brain surgery and painting a masterpiece all rolled into one.
Making food should be fun and you should feel accomplished when you are done, not be so daunted you don't even want to try.
One of the easiest types of pie to learn how to make is an icebox pie. The icebox pie, not to be confused with it's relative the icebox cake, is a southern American Desert that doesn't involve an oven, a definite plus in the south before the advent of air-conditioning. It was named after the icebox which was literally a box that held a block of ice to chill your food before homes were equipped with electric refrigerators.
With all the heavy fall and winter flavors right around the corner, I decided to make a pie that didn't feel so heavy.
Enter the Creamy lemon icebox pie.
For this pie you will need
1 8oz package of softened cream cheese
1 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk
1 8 oz container of whipped topping
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 store bought graham cracker pie crust
And.. That's it..... really.
Now would this pie be good with a fresh made batch of stabilized whipped cream, fresh squeezed lemons and a fresh made pie crust? Of course! Heck, you can even make your own sweetened condensed milk while your at it.
If you want to do that, that is great. Tell me about it! Show me a picture. Even better, send me a slice. :P Though for those of you who only go into your kitchen to heat up last night's leftover take-out, I got you. We are going to do the absolute basics.
First thing you need to do is soften your cream cheese. This means you are going to unwrap it put it on a plate or a bowl until it isn't cold anymore. That is all "softened" actually means.
Put your cream cheese in a bowl. If you have a stand mixer put it in there if not just use what ever large stable bowl that you have in your kitchen. You want to stir the cream cheese until it is smooth. You can use the paddle attachment to your stand mixer, a hand mixer or a wooden spoon.
I used my whisk attachment because my paddle was in the sink and I just couldn't be bothered.
Add in the entire can of sweetened condensed milk and beat until smooth it should look like the picture.
Now, take the bowl off the mixer or the mixer out of the bowl or set down your spoon, whatever is working for you today.
Then, fold in your whipped topping and lemon juice. To fold in ingredient take a spoon or rubber spatula and run it along the edge of the bowl and then along the bottom. Let your utensil follow the curve of the bowl until you fold the mixture over onto itself.
Once you know longer see puddles of lemon juice or large chunks of whipped topping go back to mixing until everything is nice and smooth again. It will look a lot like it did before just with more yummy stuff.
Then just pour it in the pie pan and chill until firm, it should take at lease a couple hours or overnight.
I had a little extra so I poured some in some mini graham cracker crusts I had.
And voila!
