Sunday, March 19, 2006

Strawberry Key Lime Pie

Don’t Anyone Get Between Me And My Key Lime Juice


(An Apology: I occasionally cross post things here on this blog that I also publish over on my cooking blog, The Redneck Gourmet, and this morning I find myself in the position of not having anything original worth saying so I took the opportunity to write up this pie recipe and dump it out on both blogs. You really aught to try making one for yourself and a few friends--its really quite yummy.)


Did you know that you can make a WHOLE Key Lime Pie in less than 30 minutes?

Did you know that you can make a WHOLE Key Lime Pie for about $6.00?

Further, if you are a cheep-skate like me and you don't mind making your own pie crust, did you know that you can cut the cost down to about $4.50.

That said, does anyone but me wonder why the heck a slice of Key Lime Pie costs you $5.00 in most restaurants?

Maybe they have to send someone to fly each day down to Key West and pick their own little Key limes and escort them back to their kitchen or something. That could explain the cost.

And why are these expensive pie slices colored GREEN?

The natural color of a Key Lime Pie comes out pale yellow when I make one.

Is the green color the result of radioactivity, or possibly food coloring?

Then again, maybe the high cost is due to labor.

I know from personal experience that juicing those little suckers (key limes) requires the patience of Job. The seeds are tiny and almost impossible to pick out of the juice without a fine mesh strainer, and it takes over a dozen of the little suckers to get an entire pie’s worth of juice.

I gave up juicing little limes last year once I found out that I could drive over to the grocery store and buy a bottle of Nellie and Joe’s Famous Key West Lime Juice.

This stuff is WONDERFUL.

One 16 fluid ounce bottle is said to contain the juice of at least 26 key limes. Based on my experience, it seems more like about 4 dozen of the tiny, tart citrus fruits.

Any way, I got bored last week and started thinking about doing something a little different with Key Lime Juice, and as usual—a trip to the grocery store was the answer.

What I found was that they are practically giving away Florida strawberries right now, so I bought two big packages of berries along with some other stuff, and a new form of Key Lime Pie resulted.

This recipe is EXTREMELY simple, so don’t blink your eyes or you’ll miss it.

All you need are these Ingrediants:

½ cup of Key Lime Juice
(1) 14 oz can Eaglebrand Sweetened Condensed Milk
(3) egg yolks
(1) cup pureed strawberries (drained well)

Sliced strawberrys and/or sliced kiwi fruit for garnish
A few leafs of fresh mint for garnish

(1) 8” or 9” pie crust (I used a Nabisco “Nilla” Pie crust)


You ready to make a pie now?

Step #1...Fire up your oven and set the temperature at 350 degrees F.

Step #2...Stir everything together, dump it into the pie crust, and bake for 20 minutes.

How simple is that?

When the dust settles, all that is left is to chill your pie in the fridge for a few hours, then slice it up, put it on chilled plates, and garnish it with the sliced strawberries, kiwi, and mint sprigs.

Now grab yourself a fork and EAT!


Enjoy Y’all,

The Redneck Gourmet

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