Deconstructed Lemon Cream Pie

We have a lemon and orange tree in our backyard and right now there are about 100 lemons on our tree! I thought it would be fun to make individual deconstructed lemon cream pies for the family in mason jars. I was quite surprised with how easy it ended up being. Give it a try!

 

 

Ingredients:

 

Lemon Custard:

1 C sugar

juice from one lemon

5 eggs

1 stick of butter

 

Whipping Cream:

1 pint heavy whipping cream

1/2 C powdered sugar

 

Crust:

 

Lemon wafers or lemon cookies (no cream filling though!)

 

Lemon Garnish:

 

Zest of 1 lemon (zest the lemon you are going to use in the custard first before you juice it.)

 

2 TBLSP of sugar

 Combine everything except for the zest of a lemon in a heavy weight pot.

 Whisk it at a moderate pace over medium low heat.

 Until it thickens up and looks like the picture below (about 8 minutes). Pour it in a glass bowl, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate over night or at least 4 hours. I whipped up this custard the night before and let it set up over night.

 Zest your lemon and mix with sugar. Set your zest out on wax paper until ready to use. I usually do this as I make the whip cream. Speaking of whip cream lets do that next!

Pour all of your heavy whipping cream (1 pint of it) into a stand mixer bowl. Add powdered sugar and beat until thick and luscious.

In the meantime, smash your lemon cookies up into crumbs using a mallet and a gallon sized ziplock bag.

Now, it is time for the fun part! Layer lemon custard in five medium sized mason jars. Sprinkle on the cookie crumbs and then the whipped cream. Do this one more time and top with sugared lemon zest. Put a lid on each jar and refrigerate for at least two hours.

 When ready to serve, you can put a spoon in the center of each (It will stand up nicely :-) )  or you can just serve them straight out of the fridge :-)

On a personal note, I do not like 5 eggs in the custard because it taste to "eggy" to me (if that even is a word). I was the only one that noticed it, however. It could be because I knew there were five eggs in it, therefore was subconsciously looking for it on my taste buds. I prefer this with 4 eggs, but 5 gives it a nice consistency and texture. Rumor has it that you can actually treat the custard as lemon curd to use on scones if you have extra. I did not have extra so I just don't know about that ;-)