Shaker Lemon Pie
This recipe comes from a famous local in the wonderful antique hunting colony known as Aurora Oregon. Aurora is only 3 minutes away from Canby where the wonderful Swan Island Dahlia Festival is taking place. I have recently joined a women’s photography group and they have a 6:00 am meetup planned at the dahlia field this week. I am thinking of skipping over to Aurora afterwards and visiting their farmers market and poke my head in a few of the great shops while I am so near by.
Shaker Lemon Pie Recipe
2 lemons, 2 cups sugar, 4 eggs, pastry for 2 crusts
“This is yet another very old lemon pie recipe which the early Ohio Shakers fashioned frequently. Slice two lemons as thin as paper, rind and all. Place them in a bowl (it states, yellow bowl) and pour over them 2 cups of sugar. Mix well and let stand for 2 hours or better. Then go about making your best pastry for 2 crusts. Line a pie dish with one. Beat 4 eggs together and pour over lemons. Fill unbaked pieshell with this and add top crust with small vents cut to let out steam. Place in a hot oven at 450 degrees for 15 minutes and then cut down heat and bake until a silver knife inserted into custard comes out clean.” (Apparently, until you have made this once, you will have to watch and test.)
Some in town say it is “the end of an era” when news of the passing of Vergie Taylor was announced this week. Vergie and her late husband, Max, were a major part of the development of Aurora from a tiny little North Willamette Valley town, that (fortunately) time forgot, into a dynamic destination for the appreciation of that forgotten past.
Arriving in Aurora in 1970, (44 years ago this month), they established several businesses, most of them operating simultaneously. You’d see Max or Vergie moving around between Taylor’s Treasures, their fabulous antiques store in the historic colony Keil store building, then to lunch or dinner preparations at the elegant Aurora Colony Inn Restaurant down Main Street (currently Home Again Antiques) and in between Vergie might be selling milk and popsicles at their neighborhood General Store on Highway 99E. With Vergie always upbeat and dressed in period costume, Max would be able to tell you anything about the antiques he displayed and sold.
As a parting remembrance, please print out this famous recipe served nearly every day at their Aurora Colony Inn Restaurant. It was made by Gladys Pauls who lived next door to the restaurant and baked it in her kitchen (now Time After Time). This dessert is still mentioned by people who dined there.
