The Key to My Lime Pie

I decided to make a Key Lime Pie for St. Patrick’s Day.  Why would I make this decision?  Limes are not even remotely Irish.  I can’t even rationalize it and I can rationalize just about anything!  The best that I can come up with is that limes are green and St. Patrick’s Day is all about green, right?  (You know, that and St. Patrick converting the Irish from a pagan tradition to Christianity, but really about wearing green and drinking green beer.) The fact that my Key West Lime Juice is going to expire at the end of the month was also a huge motivation.  The bottle cost almost $4 and I don’t want it to go to waste.

And that is how we came to have Key Lime Pie for St. Patrick’s Day.  I have never made a Key Lime Pie before and I did not put a lot of thought into this recipe.  I honestly followed the instructions on the lime juice bottle.  I mixed all of the ingredients up and poured them into a prepared graham cracker crust and baked for 15 minutes.  I let it cool and then put in the refrigerator overnight.  I didn’t even cheat and have a taste!  For such an easy preparation, I did not have high expectations for this pie.

And maybe because of that, I was extremely impressed with the end result.  The texture was perfect – it set up like it was from a bakery – solid, but creamy.  And the taste?  I’ve never had anything like it before.  I tried Key Lime Pie one other time when the husband and I visited Destin, FL.  I was not impressed with the expensive sliver of pie that was served to us to share.  It tasted like it was straight from a cheap frozen box from the grocery store.  (It should be noted that I am usually a big fan of those frozen box pies!  Just not when I pay the price of a box on a tiny piece of pie.) 

Not the case with this thrown together pie in my kitchen!  It was delicious – sweet, yet slightly sour, but not the kind of sour that creates what my mother calls pucker power, where your cheeks are sucked in, your mouth completely dry.  No, this was the kind of sour that made you want another bite and then another just to make sure that the sour was actually sweet or was it the sweet that was actually sour? And then another bite, just to make sure.  Before I knew it, I had eaten an entire piece and I was never sure of the answer to sweet/sour combination!

It wasn’t until my piece of pie was gone that I realized how rich the pie really was.  Maybe that was why the restaurant pieces were cut so small.  Perhaps I will cut smaller pieces next time, but probably not.   Who knew that the key to a lime pie and a happy St. Patrick’s Day celebration was a $4 bottle of lime juice?!  What a delicious, rich treasure.