Key Lime Pie - A New-to-Me (and EASY!) Recipe

When I go to Florida, I make a point of trying key lime pie at restaurants because I LOVE it, and you don't find it here at home.  I love the sweet/tart filling, the graham cracker crust, and the whipped cream on top.  YUM!

I finally decided it might be fun to try to make my own key lime pie.  First of all, of course, you need key lime juice.  Not from the limes you're used to seeing in the grocery.  Key limes are actually a different species from "regular" limes.

Key limes are also known as Mexican or West Indian limes and grow in tropical and subtropical areas.  Key limes grown in Florida are also more aromatic (sort of floral) and the juice is more tart but less acidic than grocery store limes.  They are small and spherical, light yellow when ripe instead of green, have more seeds, and have a much thinner skin, which means they don't store well.  Key limes are grown in Florida, parts of California, and Mexico, but the ones grown in Florida's alkaline soil are less bitter and juicier than the ones grown in Mexico and California.

Grocery store limes are called Persian or Tahiti limes and are larger and more acidic than Florida Key limes.   They are large, dark green, oval-shaped, and juicy.  They have thick skins that help them keep longer and ship more conveniently than Key limes.  Each Persian lime contains two to three tablespoons of juice, compared to two to three teaspoons in a Key lime.

You can substitute lime juice for key lime juice in recipes, and the taste won't be all that different, especially in sweet recipes like Key Lime Pie, but I really wanted to use real Key lime juice for my first try at making it, so I found bottled (GASP!  Heresy!) Key lime juice and used that.  

Nellie & Joe's Key Lime Pie (Baked)

9" graham cracker crust

14-oz can sweetened condensed milk

3 egg yolks (no whites are used)

1/2 c Nellie & Joe's Key West Lime Juice

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Combine sweetened condensed milk, egg yolks, and lime juice.  Blend well until smooth.  Pour filling into graham cracker pie crust.  Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.  Allow to stand 10 minutes before refrigerating.  Refrigerate at least 4 hours before serving.  Top with whipped cream.

Toys in the Kitchen Part 5, and Blender Quiche

My friend Karen, whose blog I follow, posted a recipe for quiche a few weeks ago (see it here) and I was inspired!  Oh, her recipe sounded so good, but it makes too much for my measly 9-inch, 1-inch-deep aluminum pie pan, as compared to her monster 11-inch, nearly 2-inch-deep ceramic one.  I guess I could scale it down to my size pan.

But then I thought - duh!  I have two perfectly good quiche recipes in my card file.  I haven't made a quiche in years.  I have two Real Men living here in the house, and as those of us of a Certain Age "know," Real Men Don't Eat Quiche!  LOL!  But they like eggs and cheese and onions and BACON (bacon makes everything better), so...

I got out my trusty old Black & Decker Crush Master blender and went to town.  Because this quiche is mixed in the blender, lots of air gets incorporated into the mix, which makes the quiche light and puffy instead of heavy and dense.  That Boy even ate his entire serving without picking out the vegetables!

I got in a hurry and forgot to
flute or crimp the pie crust!
It still tasted good!

Blender Quiche

4 eggs

1 c milk

1 T flour

1/2 t salt

1/4 t pepper

1/4 t nutmeg

1/2 bunch of green onions, cut in 1"-2" pieces, including tops

1 1/2 c (6 oz) shredded swiss cheese

4 slices cooked bacon, cut into 1" pieces

1 unbaked pie crust

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and set the rack in the middle position.  Put the first six ingredients in the blender and mix well.  Stop and add the onions, cheese, and bacon.  Pulse until the pieces are about 1/2" in size (6-10 times).  Pour into pie crust.  Bake 35-40 minutes.  Remove from the oven and let sit 10 minutes before serving.

TIPS:  You can just spray the pie pan or dish if you don't want the calories from the crust, add mushrooms, use a medium onion cut into eighths for the green onions, substitute light or whipping cream for the milk, or substitute cheddar cheese for swiss. 

For Quiche Lorraine, use 12 slices of bacon (1/2 pound before cooking), 1 c swiss (Gruyere) cheese, 1/3 c onion, light or whipping cream for the milk, no nutmeg, 1/4 t sugar, and 1/8 t cayenne red pepper.  Keep the eggs, flour, and salt.

Give Thanks for Pumpkin Pie - YAY!

As I wrote in an earlier post, we had Thanksgiving at our house, and that means PUMPKIN PIE.
Well, Thanksgiving is over, and Christmas is coming, and that means MORE PUMPKIN PIE!!!

When I was little, my mom used to make a no-bake pumpkin pie using unflavored gelatin and Dream Whip mix or something like that.  Those pies were cold and pale, but they were delicious.  That was the only kind of pumpkin pie I’d ever had.   Most baked pumpkin pies looked burned and unappetizing to me until I went to my sister’s house, she had made baked pumpkin pies, and we ate them WARM!  What a concept!  So here’s my pumpkin pie recipe.  I started with the recipe on the back of a can of Libby’s pumpkin, then tweaked it over the years until I came up with the flavor I wanted.

Pumpkin Pie (2 9” pies)
Filling:
1 28-oz can 100% pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie mix)
1 13-oz can sweetened condensed milk
4 eggs
1 1/2 c dark brown sugar
1 t vanilla
1 t salt
2 T flour
4 t pumpkin pie spice

2 unbaked pie crusts, crimped, in 9” pie pans

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.  Mix all filling ingredients together and divide between the two pie crusts.  Bake at 425 degrees for 15 minutes, then turn the oven down to 350 degrees and bake for another 35 minutes.  Cool on a wire rack.  When you remove the pies from the oven, the centers will not be firm.  They will finish cooking as they cool.