Baking the BEST Key lime pie

I sent sweetie to the grocery store the other day for limes so I could make a Skinny Girl margarita. Instead of the usual fat dark green Persians, he returned home with a bag of Key limes. Which are actually from Mexico, but that's a story for another day. So, what's a girl to do but make a Key lime pie? I've had a lot of Key lime pies over the years, and have fiddled with various recipes, and this, in my (and sweetie's), opinion is the best. I've included the recipe at the end of this blog.

First, do NOT use that horrid, tasteless cardboard masquerading as a graham cracker crust in the grocery store baking section. A crust can make or break a pie and this one is so easy, if you're actually going to bake a homemade pie, why not do it right?



As I said, there are a lot of different recipes for Key lime pie, but the one I prefer uses four large egg yolks.



While I was whisking the eggs, the assistant pastry chef began squeezing the key limes. It took an entire bag for a 9" pie. (Those spots of white paint you may see on his hands is from when he'd been priming the newly remodeled master bathroom walls earlier. Did I mention he's very versatile?)


Next I blended the whisked eggs with a can of sweetened condensed milk. I've tried the nonfat version before, and trust me, it doesn't taste nearly as good. So, my reasoning is that since a great piece of pie is an occasional indulgence, you might as well forget about calories.


Because I like my Key lime pie on the tart side, to contrast with the sweetness of the crust, and because it adds a lovely punch of color, I included a bit of grated zest from a brighter green Persian lime. Key limes, by the way, yellow as they ripen, but you can use them while they're still green for baking. A true Key lime pie bakes up pale yellow. As a pie purist, I'm not at all fond of recipes that suggest adding green food coloring or worse (shudder!) green Jell-O powder.


A short time in the oven, at least an hour in the refrigerator, and you're ready to serve. Some people prefer to serve it plain, savoring the unadorned glory that is a Key lime pie. Others top with meringue. Personally, I think that's overkill, and besides, Key lime is more a summer pie, and meringue can be tricky to make during summer humidity. So I opted for just a bit of whipped cream brightened with more zest I'd set aside.



Here, as promised, is the way simple recipe.

The crust:

1 1/4 cups graham cracker crumbs.
3 tablespoons sugar
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

The filling:

1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
4 large egg yolks
1/2 cup lime juice. Takes around 20 Key limes, or 5 Persian limes if Key limes aren't available.
Zest from one Persian lime.

Preheat the oven to 340 degrees F. (Various recipes will tell you different times and anywhere from 325 degrees to 350. This is what works best in my oven.)

In a medium bowl, blend the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and melted butter together with a fork. Mix until the graham cracker crumbs are moist and stick together. Press mixture into a 9 inch pie pan (mine happens to be Pyrex) with your fingers until it's evenly spread. You'll find recipes that tell you to use parchment and rice or beans to hold down the crust while baking. That's helpful with flour crusts, but I've never found it necessary for a graham cracker one.

Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Set on rack to cool.

While the crust is baking, prepare filling.

In a medium bowl, whisk the egg yolks until they're a light yellow. Then pour in the sweetened condensed milk, making sure you've scraped it all out of the can with a rubber spatula, and continue whisking until well blended. Add the lime zest and juice. Set the mixture aside for a few minutes -- while the pie crust cools to slightly warm or room temperature -- to allow it to thicken. While it's thickening, unless it's already there, boost the oven temperature to 350 degrees.

Pour the filling into the pie crust. Bake 15 minutes. Remove from oven and place on a rack. When cool, chill the pie in the refrigerator. The pie will set up even more as it chills. Chill for at least one hour or overnight before serving.

Serve cold, either plain or garnished with whipped cream.

Enjoy, bask in the accolades, and you needn't ever tell anyone how easy it was to bake a fabulous Key lime pie!

FRIDAY FUN VIDEO -- Piracy Therapy

A writer friend, Toni Blake, shared this on Twitter. Although it's technically an ad for a conference, I thought it was just too funny -- and too close to the truth -- not to share here.

Enjoy. (Unless you happen to be an internet pirate -- who needs a new descriptive name since Johnny Depp made pirates cool. Which internet piracy is so not!)

Kids' Letters to Our Soldier

As many of you know, our nephew, Kyle Elliott, has served as a medevac in both Iraq and now Afghanistan. He also flew relief/rescue missions during Hurricane Katrina and Rita, so obviously, in our book, he's a true American hero.

He was due to get out of the Army and return to school when he was stop-lossed and sent to Afghanistan. Even then he stayed optimistic, looking forward to getting back home to Oregon in time for this year's fall semester at Oregon State University, which is also sweetie's alma mater. Unfortunately, he recently learned isn't going to happen because the military doesn't have enough medevac replacements to send to that part of the world right now.

Well, the good part of this story is that I have the best writer friends and readers in the world, because several have leaped in to help raise his morale by sending him care packages and letters. One FaceBook friend's eight-year-old daughter, Casey, has even gotten her classmates to write him letters. Here are two her mom sent me yesterday:




Thinking of Casey organizing the letter writing campaign -- and her friends jumping in to help lift the spirits of a soldier so far from home -- makes me feel really optimistic about the future of our country. (I told her mom we could even be looking at a future president. Fortunately she still has time to go shopping for an outfit to wear to Casey's inauguration.)

ABC news filmed Kyle's crew for a few days. Although he's not named, you can get a couple of quick glimpses of him prepping an IV and an oxygen mask and hear his voice telling the pilot about incoming fire on his side. Oh, although the reporter's absolutely correct about the team's courage, she does have one thing wrong. The flares aren't being used to light up the area (they have infrared spotlights for that), but to decoy missiles and ruin Taliban gunners' night vision.

FRIDAY FUN VIDEO -- 11-Year-Old's Take-Off on Old Spice Commercial

I think just about everyone's seen the way hot Isaiah Mustafa's Old Spice Look at Me commercial. (And if you didn't, I hope you enjoyed your trip to Mars.) But here's an eleven-year-old who's done a fun knock-off. Made even better with some help from Ellen. Enjoy:

Construction Vs Publishing with a Hottie Bonus

As the daughter of a contractor, I grew up on construction sites. During my 20s and early 30s, because I know how to read blueprints and order all materials from brick to cabinets, I even worked as a construction coordinator and field superintendent. Although it could get really uncomfortable in the triple digit temperatures of a blazing Arizona summer, it paid a lot better than what more "traditional" women's jobs did back then. And I loved the satisfaction of having someone's home or office building to show for all the hard work the crews and I put in.

We've had three of our five homes custom built. Since we moved into this house eleven years ago, we've done a major project each year. (The house was only seven years old, but I like putting my own stamp on things, plus, I've come to accept that it's pretty much become a hobby.) I'm sharing all this to explain, as I told my contractor -- while we stared at the disaster that was supposed to be an Italian glass tile wall -- I'm not your typical crazed, emotional homeowner.

This current master bathroom remodel began because I wanted to change the shower tile so we could sell the house and move back home to Oregon this summer. Well, life delayed that plan, but we decided to go ahead with the job anyway. Now, as most people in publishing know, I don't do synopses. Partly because I write to find out what happens and partly because I honestly don't have a carefully thought out sequence by sequence blueprint when I begin. This has worked just dandy for me since I sold my first novel in 1982.

Unfortunately, construction is not publishing. Trust me. . . . My "fly into the mists" method does NOT work well on a construction project. We're talking Murphy's Law in perpetual motion here.

However, as we all revisit the wall this week, I remain hopeful. Meanwhile, since my construction dust-clogged brain has forgotten what I'd originally planned to blog about today, I'm sharing a hottie I occasionally use as a page-in-progess marker on my website. Unfortunately, none of the guys who've been basically living in my house the past month look like this.

FRIDAY FUN VIDEO -- Amazon Reader Reviews

Amazon reader reviews should come with a warning label. Here's one writer's LOL take on hers:

Garden photos & cards for soldiers

I LOVE irises! Usually we have hundreds in our front yard, back yard, wooded area and along our fence lines. Maybe it's because of all the rain (60.66" last year, and bunches this year so far) making our red clay too dense for the roots to breathe, but this year only a few dozen came up. Here's one of them.

The good news is that this is turning out to be a fabulous year for hydrangeas! We currently have thirteen, but I want to add more. This one can't quite make up its mind what color wants to be. What the photo doesn't show -- and thinking about it, perhaps I should have put a ruler next to the flowers -- is that they're double the size of a softball.


This, more decisive one right next to it, is one is all pink. All the time.


Back in our wooded area, we have several white hydrangeas, which have grown to between 8-10 feet tall since we planted them eight years ago.


This past weekend, along with my usual cards for soldiers, I made two very personal ones. This first one is for a sergeant single mom who's deployed at the most dangerous base in Iraq to send back home to her son. Since we just "adopted" her through Soldiers Angels, I don't know what he likes yet, but hope to find out soon when I hear back from her. The owl was cut with my Cricut Paisley cartridge in layers, but since it called for a flower on the wing, which seemed too girly for a boy, I covered the little indentations it made with a star instead. The stickers are from my stash; the You stands out a bit more in real life because those letters are acrylic.


We also had bad news last week. Our medevac nephew, who was stop-lossed last year and sent to Afghanistan, had been focused on getting out in September so he could attend Oregon State University, which has been his dream since he was a little boy. Not long ago sweetie, an OSU alum, sent him a OSU Beavers pin he wears on his body armor when he goes out on a mission. Well, unfortunately, they need a LOT of medics who go out in helicopters in Afghanistan, so he was told that he won't be coming home anytime soon. Certainly not in time for fall semester and no one can tell him for sure when he will finally be getting out. Since he's also served in Iraq, needless to say this was not what he was looking to hear.

So, to hopefully boost his morale, I found a photo of Benny the Beaver -- the team mascot -- playing a guitar and matted it with orange, which I inked in black on the edges, on some grunge black paper. Then, inside, I cut out letters saying You Rock! in black with an orange shadow. Yes, those are Halloween colors, and I doubt there's a woman alive who looks good in them, which only goes to show how loyal true Beav fans are. LOL

Friday Fun Video -- Book Signing Woes Ballad

If the bottom ever falls out of the publishing business, mystery writer Parnell Hall might want to give ballad writing a shot. I LOVE this one! Enjoy: