Lime Pie

This is not a key lime pie.  Key limes are somewhat milder in taste and less green in color.  I like the extreme lime-ness of regular Persian limes better.  This is another recipe that originated in Rosie's All-Butter Fresh Cream Sugar-Packed No-Holds Barred Baking Book.  I started tweaking the graham cracker crust many years ago, and more recently, I've, shall we say, expanded on the sour cream topping.

Here's my reasoning.  Graham cracker crusts can be a little one note, and that note to me is flat.  So I started by adding 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon, then 1/4 teaspoon cocoa powder.  That livened things up.  I have to really dig back into my childhood for the next change.  When I was a kid, my mom made a chocolate cream pie (chocolate pudding mix to be precise), and she added walnuts to the graham cracker crust, and they sort of caramelized when it baked, because of the sugar and butter.  That gave me the idea of toasting some pecans, then grinding them up and adding them to the graham cracker crust.  I also struggled to make the crust fit in the pan...it seemed like there was never enough.  So I increased all of the ingredients just a tad, and now I have a nice thick crust.  It ends up tasting almost like a cross between a cookie and candy...you'll see.

A few months ago I was making this pie, and it occurred to me that it's hard to spread the sour cream over the hot pie filling.  So I just increased the amount, this time to 1 1/2 times as much as the original recipe called for.  Now it's easier to spread and it completely covers the filling.  Curiously, I've been thinking it's because I use a 10-inch pie pan, but I just checked my cookbook, and they claim that the original recipe works for a 9-inch or a 10-inch pan, so I just think they want a thinner layer.  Trust me when I say that you'll LOVE the thicker crust.  By the way, a thank you to our friend Elia, who gave us this ceramic pie pan many years ago.  It is now the ceremonial lime pie pan.  The photos will show you why.

A side note.  I used to be able to find Nabisco Honey graham crumbs at the supermarket, but strangely now I can only find Keebler's.  They don't taste right to me, so I smash up a package of graham crackers and keep the extra in the freezer for the next time.  Hmm...I wonder if I can find them on Amazon.  The packaged ones are much more uniform than what I've been able to do.  I just looked them up and you can only buy humungous quantities, so I guess I'll have to work on my crushing abilities.

Mise en place:

 LIME PIE

Graham Cracker Crust:

1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs (see above)
1/4 cup superfine sugar
8 Tablespoons (4 oz) unsalted butter
1/2 cup toasted pecans, ground but not turned into pecan butter :)

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cocoa powder

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Spray your pie pan with Pam (so you'll be able to get it out later...).
Stir all of the ingredients except the butter together in a medium sized bowl.  Add the melted butter and toss until the butter is evenly distributed.

Pat the crumbs firmly over the bottom and up the sides of a 9-inch or 10-inch pie plate.

Place the pie plate on the center oven rack and bake until the crust is crisp and golden, about 8 minutes.

Allow the crust to cool completely on a rack before filling.

Filling:

1 can (14 ounces) sweetened condensed milk
1/2 cup plus 2 Tablespoons (5 oz) fresh lime juice (5 to 7 limes).  Add some ReaLime if you can't get      
         enough juice out of the fresh limes.
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 Tablespoons grated lime zest
Dash of salt

Topping:
12 ounces sour cream
6 Tablespoons super fine sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Place all the filling ingredients in a medium-size mixing bowl and stir them with a whisk until they are completely mixed.

A note on lime zest.  A microplane zester makes this the easiest thing you can do.  Lime skins consist of the zest (the green outer part with all the flavor) and the pith (the bitter white part).  The extreme sharpness of the microplane makes it easy to just get the zest, with none of the pith.  Definitely worth the investment.

This is about how much lime zest you want (it's almost impossible to measure it in a spoon):

Also, before you cut the limes in half to squeeze the juice (or use a fancy juicer like I have), roll and press on them on the counter top to release the juice from the pulp.

Even so, I often come up a little short for this recipe, or I lose patience, and then I use the ReaLime.

Be sure that you thoroughly whisk all of the ingredients.  You're not done until you can't see the egg whites.

Pour the filling into the pie shell.

Bake the pie on the center oven rack until it begins to set, 10 minutes.  Remove the pie from the oven and increase the heat to 425 degrees F.

Whisk the topping ingredients together in a small bowl and spread the topping over the pie.

Bake the pie for 5 minutes more.  The topping will be loose when you remove the pie, but it will set as it cools.  Cool on a rack, then chill the pie for 6 hours before serving.

One of the great things about this dessert is that you do it first thing in the morning, and then you don't have to think about it until you serve it.  Quite a plus when you're serving guests.  Also, it will bleed (the butter seeps out of the crust and some of the liquid seeps out of the filling) after it is cut, but we just discovered that you can cut the leftovers (if there are any) and freeze them in individual slices.  Then all you have to do is put it on a plate and leave it out for about 45 minutes.