Why does my banana cream pie with vanilla pudding always turn runny after I bake my meringue?

I have tried putting the meringue on hot pudding and then baking it and I have tried cooling the pudding before baking the neringue. I just use a Betty Crocker standard recipe.
1/3 cup sugar, 2 Tlb. cornstarch, 1/8 tsp salt, 2 cups milk, 2 beaten egg yolks, 2 Tlb. butter(I use stick margarine), 2 tsp. vanilla. For the meringue, I use the standard recipe. 2 egg whitges, 1/4 tsp. cream tarter, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 tsp vanilla. PLEASE HELP

Success
  • Posted by: Success
  • August 1, 2011
  • 36579 views
  • 4 Comments

4 Comments

Greenstuff
Greenstuff August 1, 2011
My mother was more of a cook than a baker, but she made drop-dead lemon meringue pies. Her advice to avoid the lemon turning runny was to chill the pie before adding the meringue, add the meringue just before serving, make sure that the meringue was spread all the way to the edges so that no custard was exposed, and brown under a boiler, like sdebrango and Droplet suggested.
 
boulangere
boulangere August 1, 2011
I agree with the wisdom of the hive here. Definitely cool the custard completely before even thinking about the broiler. Once the starch has been cooked, to essentially re-cook it causes the starch molecules to begin to break down and shed the liquid to which they were bound.
 
Droplet
Droplet August 1, 2011
When working with thickeners such as starches (corn, potato), tapioca....I know that there is phase that happens after the point of thickening has occured and during which you sort of break what you have just done; they get back runny again. The reason usually is overcooking. I don't make pies, but perhaps sdebrango has the answer up here. If you are cooking the meringue on anything else other than broil, you are exposing the whole pie filling to additional cooking time and maybe that's why it gets runny.
 
sdebrango
sdebrango August 1, 2011
I use more cornstarch or flour in my cream pie recipe but wonder are you baking the pie with meringue? Do you put the oven on broil. The cream filling should be cold and you should put it in the oven on broil for a very short time just long enough for the meringue to brown,
 
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