Last summer was incredibly hot for what felt like forever. It was actually one of the hottest summers in history here in MN. Since I am in the mode of perfecting recipes I decided to do a more summery pie. I asked for input and the final verdict was key lime pie. Shoot. I really do not like this pie. I have never had a taste for it and I know that there are key lime snobs out there. However, once I set my mind to do something I do it.

To begin, I started searching the web for key lime recipes since I did not have my cook book handy. (I would have done this anyway to compare recipes). This immediately put me into a panic. There are tons of recipes for key lime pie out there and they are all slightly different. Some with more sweetened condensed milk than others, some with sour cream, some with eggs, some with food coloring. The basic components were the same but I have no idea what to do with this pie. Fruit pies are easy. I’ve done them for years. I can search recipes and pick one out and know what to do to tweak it to make it perfect or just not do it at all based on the componants, but key lime might be my death sentence.

I settled on two recipes. One from pioneer woman and one from allrecipes.com. They were drastically different. The pioneer woman used only one can sweetened condensed milk & egg yolks. She claimed you could use limes if you didn’t have key limes so I decided to try it with limes. The other recipe used two cans sweetened condensed milk and sour cream & I used the key limes for that one. Now when I was squeezing the limes for these recipes I didn’t know how they would taste. The key lime juice was like lime juice on steroids. It was so tart. I don’t know if it is because I live in MN and the key limes are not as fresh but the juice from the key limes compared to the limes might make a difference in the pies.

When it was all said and done. It was actually the allrecipes.com pie that one the contest. The pioneer woman key lime pie was delicious. It was very light and sweet and refreshing. The consistency just wasn’t what one wanted for a key lime pie. The other pie was more tart but not overwhelming. The extra sweetened condensed milk and sour cream was able to counteract the tart key lime juice. The texture of the pie was very nice as well.

I only had one key lime pie snob to test them out on, but he was the only one that mattered since it was his request.