Krissy, our guest baker, returns with an awesome Key Lime Pie recipe! This isn’t your green jello in a pre-made crust sort of pie, this is the authentic Florida dessert — everything is made from scratch, from the pie crust to the whipped cream at the end!

No one really knows when the first key lime pie was made, but it is known that prior to the opening of the Overseas Highway in 1930 luxuries such as fresh milk were unavailable. Due to the lack of milk and refrigeration, items such as sweetened condensed milk were a staple in many recipes. Early on, key lime pies were not baked as they relied on a chemical reaction between the milk and lime juice called ’souring’ – this produced a thick, creamy texture. In the interest of food safety, the pies are baked now and the pie takes on an even more custard-like texture.

Key limes (Citrus aurantifolia) are quite different from regular Persian limes. They are significantly smaller, seedier and more fragrant than a regular lime. They are ripe when their skin is mostly yellow and their rind is also thinner than a traditional lime.

In its simplest form, one only needs a crust, sweetened condensed milk, lime juice and egg yolks, but never…ever, EVER green food coloring. The beauty of the key lime pie is its pale yellow color that comes mostly from the egg yolks.

In 2006, the Key Lime Pie became the official pie of the state of Florida, but long before that my husband – Dave and I have loved the sweet, sour and versatile key lime pie. Before we ever set foot in the Keys, our first summer was spent trying the pie at every restaurant we ran across. It was only later when we finally planned our first trip to the Keys did we realize how many different ways one could eat key lime pie: plain, frozen, fried, chocolate dipped, chocolate lined crust, fruit filled, meringue topped…

Take a trip to the keys inside….

Michelle, over at Thursday Night Smackdown has a First Thursday challenge. Yesterday was the first Thursday of the month, and the theme was The Grill. The challenge is to pick a recipe you’ve never tried, using the theme, and bang it out. As usual for our First Thursday challenge, Christey and I switched roles — I shot the photos, and Christey cooked (though she edited the photos and I’m writing the post).

Christey was paging through cookbooks and magazines last week, looking for a recipe. I had the July Saveur out, as I was still doing the gravlax thing, and she said, “Oooh! Citrus grilled lobster tails!” and pointed out the recipe to me.

“That’s not a recipe from the magazine, it’s an ad for Frei Brothers wine,” I said.

“Who cares? It’s a recipe, and it’s lobster on the grill!”

“You have a good point,” I said.

So, for Christey’s very first grilling experience as chef, we present to you the Frei Brothers winery recipe of Grilled Lobster Tail, with Salad and Citrus Dressing:

Fire and shellfish, what’s not to love?

Even though we live in a semi-tropical area, guava isn’t a huge part of the Floridian diet. Almost any fruit, especially the astonishingly huge variety of citrus, are used everywhere, but not much guava.

I’ve used the paste for barbecue sauce, but I’ve only had a surreal experience with the raw fruit. I was horseback riding in the Costa Rican rainforest, when our 17-year-old guide shouted out to a guest:
“No no! Don’t let him [the horse] eat the guava fruits!” (Guava fruit were dotting the trail for miles and the horses would lunge for them)

“Why? Is it poisonous?” she asked.

“No,” he said, “it gives the horses gas. And the stables are right next to the house.”

This wouldn’t normally bode well for experimenting with tropical fruit, but herbivores and omnivores are two different beasts, and Christey found these thai guava fruits in my favorite produce place. So, since it’s August and we may have the outskirts of a hurricane to deal with this week, we decided to play around with some tropical drinks.

Now, I was a bartender in college, but my main gig was a wine and beer pub on campus. My off-campus mixed drink career was limited to college staples like sloe gin fizzes, white russians, the perfect kamikaze, and a few drinks that couldn’t be said in polite company.

My roommate and I would experiment with the odd combination to see if we could pull it off. We were on the quest to create a “stoplight” — a layered drink that was red on top, then yellow, then green on the bottom. I found a pretty good stoplight that was upside-down: midori(green melon) on top, orange juice in the middle, grenadine on the bottom. Not too alcoholic, but it tasted good and the densities made a nice set of layers. The only successful stoplight I made in color was sloe gin (red) on top, orange juice (yellow) and creme-de-menthe (green) sinking to the bottom. Perfectly layered. OhMyGawdAwful in taste.

I felt a little like that with the guava. These days I can make a fabulous vodka martini, and a drop-dead cosmopolitan. But when it comes to new drink creations, I don’t think I’m there yet.

In any case, here are two attempts with thai guava fruit. A rum based “Thai Sunset” and a champagne based “Sunrise Mimosa”

sunrise, sunset, as long as there’s sun