(… Todd is such a stickler for details …)
On Sunday I went down to the river to watch the open water 2k swim. Some friends (old and new) came all the way from DC just to get into that turbid, 60-something degree water. It almost looked like fun, but I think I had a better time taking pictures.
This young man in a kilt was entertaining everyone with his pipes :
For the post-swim party I was tasked (or at least, I was asked) to make a keylime pie. At some point during the prep it occurred to me that this pie making marks my very first in 2009 (is it already May? where *does* the time go? certainly not into making pies). I’ve always made my keylime pie with a graham cracker crust, and some time ago, around the time that I realized what a chore it was to procure acceptable graham crackers, I decided to make the graham crust from scratch (even though mashing up graham crackers can be both physically entertaining as well as somewhat intellectually stimulating (assuming you let yourself contemplate varying new means of getting it done (the car-in-the-driveway-steamroller method comes to mind (it works! (but you *do* want to employ a fairy sturdy bag))))).
It turns out that making graham cracker dough is fairly straightforward. The dough is *not entirely* unlike standard pie crust in that it contains some flour, some shortening, and a touch of salt. Apart from that it’s pretty much entirely different as it also consists of whole wheat (or graham) flour, butter, leavening (baking powder/soda) and lots of tasty sugars: brown sugar, milk, and honey. It’s entirely possible that Dr. Heartscan blog would *not entirely* approve (but I suspect he wouldn’t like the regular crust either; c’est la vie (sweeter and shorter, as he might say)).
Now I could go to all the trouble of making graham crackers from the dough, then crushing them, then shorting the crumbs with even more butter, but to me that’s a little extreme. Call me an impurist, but I just roll the dough out and put it into a pie shell. The recipe I use makes enough dough for two pie crusts (plus a token cracker) so that’s what I made.
From here, making a keylime pie is not overly complicated. Separating egg yolks from the white is the most technical remaining step, and juicing about 20 (small and seedy) key limes is the most physically taxing, not to mention an excellent means of discovering even the tiniest nick or cut in your bare hands and fingers. All that acid is a good thing though, as it helps to “cook” the yolks, and 12 to 15 minutes in oven finishes it up nicely.
The key lime pie was gone before nightfall (it’s almost always very popular), and in the morning I started to ponder the destiny of the second crust. I had enough key limes for a duplicate, but I was interested to try something new so I put on the thinking cap as I surveyed the contents of the fridge. Inside I found strawberries and cream cheese, and seeing these reminded me of strawberry icebox pie. Then I considered all of the blueberries that I had in the freezer, et voila, I had a plan: blueberry icebox pie!
