Pomegranate Winter Chiffon Pie

 As I made a plan for this pie, I had decided to use my smaller  Rose's pie plate. But ultimately I decided to use the recipe's suggested 9 1/2" deep dish and was lucky enough to find a beautiful and inexpensive Pyrex one.   

    In August, Rose gave us some new information on her blog about how to prep the pie plate for the meringue shell, as opposed to the initial recipe information found in The Baking Bible. 
   Her latest results were that: "coating the pie plate with non-stick cooking spray and then dusting it with cornstarch ... worked the charm." She had tested more by coating the plate with non-stick spray, wiping it off with paper towel, and dusted with corn starch. Instead of piping the meringue, she just spread an even layer onto the plate with spatula. Without the cornstarch she found it was more difficult to spread the meringue, and at times the meringue was still gooey in places and needed more times back in oven because it will not cut unless totally dry. 
     Nevertheless, her conclusions were: "Piping makes it easier for consistency in thickness, but spreading looks as good. 
   "The non-stick cooking spray plus cornstarch is ideal and makes it possible to unmold the meringue shell. Non-stick spray alone is slippery, which makes it harder to spread the meringue and will not be possible to unmold in one piece." Finally:
    "With or without cornstarch, non-stick cooking spray makes removing the slices much easier than shortening and flour."
 (Rose posted the above on 8/13/16 in blog Real Baking with Rose)

11/29/16
                  Mis en Place for the Crisp Meringue Pie Shell
 I am very poor at piping. I have taken classes, but not enough. I wanted to pipe the meringue and it started out okay in the center of the plate spiral, but soon it was off-center and I was trying to fill in. The temperature was warm in the kitchen and it began to melt. I was panicked because I was running out of meringue. 
    So, after baking, I just did the best I could with what I had by glazing with white chocolate, but it wasn't good enough I found out later as still more major cracks showed up in the morning. 

Using non-stick spray and cornstarch to prep plate

I had made the white chocolate glaze and applied it where I saw large cracks. Then today after it rested all night (what was left of the night, that is), there were still more cracks in the body and around the top. I had already spent about 7 hours and I was bone tired, and it has been raining for three days. I doubt if that mattered however. So I just moved forward and did not glaze with more white chocolate today. What you see here below in the baked shell is from yesterday and there are many more deep cracks. I am just going to serve it in coupe style. They can chomp away at chunks of delectable white-chocolate meringue, Oh my!

So, I then went on with the filling, which was easy and delicious:

Pomegranate base ready for cream addition

There is a residue of cornstarch and white chocolate glaze on the bottom that is not very pleasant. At this picture the pie had only been in fridge an hour and the filling was not totally congealed, although it tasted delicious.