One of Captain Jamie’s favorite desserts is Key Lime Pie. We have tried many different ones over the years, with my favorite being here in the Keys, at Marker 88 Restaurant. Last year I was on an instant pot cheesecake baking obsession and I attempted… you guessed it… a Key Lime Pie Cheesecake. Now, at the time I was living in Tennessee and did not have access to real key limes, but as I wanted to try and be authentic, I ordered “Key West Lime Juice” with the hope that it would be a close second to the actual key limes. Needless to say it was a spectacular failure. I took one bite of it, and the rest went in the garbage. It put me off of attempting to bake key lime anything.
Jamie’s obsession with key lime continued on this last summer with a trip to a custard shop in Pennsylvania where they just happen to have a special flavor for summertime, Key Lime Custard. Unfortunately it turned out to be a one time flavor, which we figured out after multiple trips back to the custard store where we had to comfort ourselves with other custard flavors that never quite lived up to the key lime, but did give a solid try.
Fast forward to last week when we went to check out one of the local markets here in Marathon, and found an in-house key lime pie that we decided to try. While it was good, for me it was just too tart. For Jamie’s birthday today I decided since we are here in the Florida Keys, and have easy access to authentic key limes, that a key lime dessert was worth trying again. When I read the recipe it stated that it would require about 20 key limes due to their small size. I didn’t think that would truly be the case, so only one bag of key limes came home with me. Thirty minutes later, another trip to the store for one more bag of key limes occurred…. yes it does take about 20 🙂 For a first attempt at Key Lime Pie I was pretty happy with the outcome. The crust was a little too crumbly, but the custard turned out pretty good. I compared it to the two pieces of key lime pie we still had from the market purchased one, and feel like it was a pretty good competitor. Wish I knew why the store one is so yellow… if someone knows drop me a line!
As I am trying to improve on the recipe for my next attempt, I was contemplating using a pecan crust that my mom used for a no bake chocolate cheesecake that she made all the time when I was growing up. I think that even though gram cracker is traditional for key lime pie, I will try and use the crust from her recipe see what happens. Definitely feel like this could be on the menu for future guest dessert!
