First of all, though, please remember that, unlike the blogger who developed this recipe, I am really not a chef. A lot of what goes on in this blog is me learning from experience. And I did learn something here!
So, the first part of this recipe involved squeezing the limes to get 1/2 a cup of lime juice. I do not have a juicing apparatus of any sort, so I was doing this with my bare hands. Also, I had a cut under one of my fingernails which I obtained in a goat-related incident earlier this week. Have you ever squeezed limes by hand when you have a tiny cut? You might as well take a knife and chop your finger off. It is painful. I did the best I could, because sacrifices must be made for the sake of the blog.
You're also supposed to add 1 teaspoon of lime zest. Unfortunately, I do not have a zesting tool, and my cheese grater was in the dish washer. So I decided to skip the zesting part. (Note to self: Get a juicer and a zester.)
I did end up with a half a cup of lime juice, somehow. The next ingredient is an entire can of coconut milk. It has to be the super creamy, full fat kind. If you are ever looking for coconut milk in the store, you can find it with the Asian foods. Do not get confused and buy the coconut "milk" dairy substitute. They are nothing alike. Look for a can similar to this one.
This is what it looks like inside the can. I can never resist tasting stuff, so I tried a little bit. It has a pleasing, creamy texture, and an obvious coconut taste. I have heard you can use this stuff to make dairy free ice cream, and that will be one of my next adventures... but I digress...
So, next, all of the coconut milk, plus the lime juice, needed to be mixed together in a sauce pan, along with 5 tablespoons of cornstarch, a pinch of salt, half a cup of sugar (it said maple syrup or liquid sweetener, actually, but I had neither of those so I just used regular white sugar) and a teaspoon of vanilla extract. (Yay, I didn't forget the vanilla extract this time!)
The next part is similar to the Banana Dream Pie recipe I made earlier. You heat up the mixture at medium high heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens.
This is when I made a mistake. When I made the Banana Dream Pie filling, it had thickened up very quickly when it started boiling. But when this mixture started boiling, it didn't seem to thicken up as much. I forgot to read the part where the recipe tells you that it will continue to thicken as it cools. Instead, I thought it would be a good idea to add more cornstarch. Cornstarch is the main thickening agent in these recipes. Unfortunately I got a little wild with the cornstarch and tossed in way too much. I probably ended up doubling the amount of cornstarch. It did thicken very quickly after that... a little too quickly. I cut my losses by taking it off the heat.
I was using the same Honey Maid graham cracker crust that I used for the Banana Dream Pie. I dumped the mixture into the pie shell.
The next direction was to let it chill in the refrigerator overnight. As I learned from the Banana Dream Pie recipe, a lot of magic happens in the chilling process. So I was glad to put this pie into the fridge, and shut the door for the night.
The next day, it was time to try it.
As you may be able to tell from the picture, the excess cornstarch had caused the filling to take on a gelatinous consistency, and the back part of the crust just sort of tumbled off.
My aunt was on hand to helpfully and very thoroughly document the pie eating process for me.
There were a few obvious things I noticed, due to my own mistakes. The first was that the filling was a lot thicker than it should have been. Next time I will do my best to not dump half a box of cornstarch into the mixture. Second, it was not quite as limey as the lime pies I've made in the past using the traditional recipe. That may be because I didn't add the lime zest, and may be because I've used more lime juice other times.
Other than that, though, I think the coconut milk was an amazing substitute for the usual egg whites and condensed milk used in key lime pie. It was delicious. It was sweet and sour. It reminded me of summer time.
After the holidays are over... I'm actually thinking either National Pie Day on January 23 or National Pi Day on March 14... I will redo this recipe and try to follow directions better. As for the rest of you, if you are looking for a great Key Lime Pie recipe (or regular lime pie recipe, since these are obviously not Key Limes, but Key Lime Pie sounds a lot better than Plain Lime Pie) I encourage you to try this one out. Thank you, From My Bowl blogger!
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