at any rate, $0.98 for a bag of about 15 key limes was too good a deal to pass up. i decided it was time to attempt a key lime pie. i made use of the joy of cooking for the recipe, which turns out to be surprisingly easy.
for this attempt, i did a two-pronged approach. i was really only interested in making key lime tartlets (is that a good description of a mini-pie?), but i was willing to make a crust from scratch. however, i also found some pre-made graham cracker crusts in two inch pie tins. so i decided to do both.
ingredients:
- 14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk
- zest of about four limes
- about 1/2 cup lime juice (about 5 limes)
- four large egg yolks
- one cup graham cracker dust (about 5 oz of pre-dusted crackers)
- 1/2 stick butter
preparation:
for the crust, i pulverized the crackers in jackie's magic bullet. in retrospect, though, it would've been far easier to put the crackers in a bag and simply use a rolling pin. live and learn, i suppose. i also threw a little nutmeg and cinnamon into the dust. i melted the butter, mixed it into the dust, and formed the crust. i spooned the mix into a pie pan and pressed it into a crust. to set things, i baked the crust at 350°F for about ten minutes and let it cool before adding the filling.
for the filling, i mixed the milk, the lime juice/zest, and the egg yolks together and scooped it into the pie crusts. with six tartlets and one regular pie, the regular pie didn't get a whole lot of filling (but that's okay). the recipe book says to bake at 325°F until it looks set; given the smaller size of the tartlets and the thinness of the regular pie, it only took about 10 minutes to cook properly.
verdict:
i am very happy with this result. there was a good amount of citrus flavor to the filling, and it was nicely creamy. the premade tartlet crust was decent, and i was surprised (in a good way) with the homemade graham cracker crust. even though it's annoying to get the crust properly spread out in the pan, i think i'll continue with that for larger pies. i might even use a muffin tin to make mini pies in the future.
