4.01.2011

Key Lime Pie

I love limes. I never use them as much as I would like, but the tangy sweet smell when you cut one open always makes me feel like I'm at the beach, in a field of wildflowers in the spring, on a glacier mountain top, and in a house with a white picket fence all at the same time. It smells like clear blue sky.

A couple drops of lime juice in a cup of ice cold water is the best, and is really good for you. It has a crazy amount of vitamin C, as well as omega 3 and 6 fatty acids. It's the good stuff.
  
Since adding a can of sweetened condensed milk kind of negates all those nutrients, and I can't always be completely healthy, I've decided to accept my fate and just deem this the soul-embiggening week. There's always time next week to write about healthy food. (Although I should get some credit because other recipes I looked at had TWO cans of sweetened condensed milk, and I dropped it down to one, with fluffy egg whites to make up for the loss in mass. I just saved you 1600 calories.)

Ingredients:
Crust:
- 1 bag 1 1/2-2 cups graham cracker crumbs (crushing them in the original bag makes it SO easy)
- 6 tablespoons melted butter
Pie:
- 3 eggs
- 1/2 cup lime/key lime juice
- 1 can sweetened condensed milk
- Pinch of salt
- Pinch of cream of tartar
Topping options:
- Sliced limes for decorating 
- Whipping cream for topping
- 1 cup sour cream + 2 tablespoons powdered sugar

Pie-ify: 
Preheat oven to 325*. Crush the graham crackers and mix with the melted butter. Use your fingers to press into a pie pan; it'll be a little crummy, but just do your best to make sure there aren't any holes and it is evenly distributed. 
Bake the crust for about 10-15 minutes, till slightly brown. 
Well, slightly more brown than moist graham crackers.

Separate two eggs, placing the egg whites in a small mixing bowl and set aside. 
Beat egg yolks with the third egg and add sweetened condensed milk and lime juice. 
Beat the egg whites, salt, and cream of tartar with an electric mixer till stiff peaks form. 
Fold the two mixtures together. 
Pour into crust, bake for 10-15 minutes until the middle is set (it doesn't jiggle too much). 
Pull it out to cool, then place in the freezer for several hours, or overnight. 
Decorate and serve with whipped cream and/or lime slices, or sour cream topping.  

5 comments:

  1. woah yum. anything with sweetened condensed milk is automatically catapulted into Company A-one prime - this looks to be no exception.

    If you have two cans, you should make these. I made them for Jeremy when he was craving guava. pretty much good.
    http://www.eaglebrand.com/recipes/details/?RecipeId=5570&CategoryIndex=1

    ReplyDelete
  2. May or may not be, in my humble opinion, the most amazing desert ever.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yummmmm I really want to make this. I'm getting quite the lengthy list of new desserts to try. :P

    ReplyDelete
  4. As a native Floridian, and just so you know, Key Lime Pie MUST be made with Key Limes. As for the sweetened condensed milk...well, I reserve my opinion on that one as it's negotiable (but the limes are an absolute...:))

    ReplyDelete
  5. Dully noted, Mrs. B!
    I actually used key lime juice, and then used normal limes for decoration. Thinking back now, I suppose that was a bit contradictory....
    =)

    ReplyDelete

Contributors