COOKING: Key Lime Pie

Since we do not have a huge flat section to our backyard, I needed to take a risk when it came to planting citrus trees. I love cooking Thai and asian inspired food, and found I needed lemon, lime and lime leaves a fair bit. The solution was to buy "dwarf" trees, bred specifically for large pots. They cost way more than normal trees, but I wanted to take the chance that it might be a great thing if it worked. To grow citrus in pots - you have to be super careful to not let the pot dry out.... and they are ravenous feeders - so you need a strict fertilising program.

Anyway - this is a cooking post, not a gardening one (!) but the upshot of the above is that I get home grown lemons, Tahitian limes and a constant supply of kaffir lime leaves (yum!). For a little "tree" there were about 15-20 limes ready to pick about a fortnight ago......so I had an idea!

I got onto one of my favourite Cooking Sites (www.taste.com.au) and searched for:

Key Lime Pie

Essentially, I did follow the recipe, mostly, and I will admit my alterations to you. You will find the recipe on the following link: KEY LIME PIE.

Interestingly, this is not a popular pie here in Australia...... I only ever read or hear about it on American influenced TV or inter webbing.

This is how I did it:

First I put my new iPad on my cook book stand! It worked really well!

I got some cookies (these were "butternut snaps" but in hindsight, they needed to be plainer biscuits) 

Used a plastic bag and my pestle to crush them. I didn't feel like dirtying my food processor just for this step.

Weighed out my butter then melted it in the microwave.

MY limes   ;-)

Squeezed out the half cup of juice and used my microplane to get the rind fine. I probably used double the rind, about two teaspoons.

Combine the cookie crumbs with the cooled melted butter.

Press into pie plate. Mine was about 23cm (9 inches) at the widest point. Normal size. I didn't take the base up as high as the pie on the site picture.

Getting ready to teach those yolks a lesson with my mixer.

Once mixed, add the condensed milk and the......

Lime juice and rind in little alternate pours. Mix well.

I've always wanted to make a GREEN PIE - I didn't have green colour so I mixed drops of yellow and blue and made it a green to my liking. But then I am ODD, you know! This was not on the official recipe.

Pour this gorgeousness into the baked and cooled pie base.

This is cooling after coming out of the oven - only took 20 minutes. You don't want to start this pie browning.

OMG! Whip up some cream and make it pretty. Sprinkle with extra lime rind.

THIS WAS GOOD!! Definitely a Keeper. I gave it a  9 / 10 ......it would have scored higher with a plainer biscuit used in the base. The nutty-ness detracted from the lime kick a weeeee bit. But, oh so good anyway!!

AND SO EASY TO DO!