Key lime pie flavored with spruce tips is a simple dessert that tastes like spring.
Serve with stewed blueberries or whipped cream.
Makes one 9.5-10 inch pie, or at least 8 servings.
Scant 1 oz spruce tips, choppedsuch as white spruce, or blue spruce
1 ¾cupsheavy cream
4sheets leaf gelatin (silver) or one ¼ oz packet unflavored gelatinsheet gelatin grades are organized by color/strength-see note
¼teaspoonsalta pinch
¼cupwhite sugar
A few scrapes of fresh lime zest
½cupkey lime juice
1 can sweetened condensed milk (14oz size)
Walnut-Graham Crust
¼teaspoonsalta pinch
6tablespoonsunsalted butter
¼cupsugar
1.25cupsgraham cracker crumbs
¼cupfinely chopped black walnutsor regular walnuts
¼teaspoonground cinnamon
Good pinch of salt
Instructions
Crust
First bake the crust. Preheat the oven to 350, then melt the butter and mix with the graham crumbs and black walnut or regular walnuts, cinnamon, sugar and salt. Press the mixture into an 9-10 inch inch pie dish, then bake for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Cool the crust while you prepare the filling.
Filling
Bloom the gelatin sheets if using in ice water. Warm half of the cream with the condensed milk in a saucepan, then whisk in the gelatin sheets (squeeze them dry) or powdered gelatin thoroughly until just dissolved, remove from the heat, add the remaining cream, salt and sugar and whisk in a sink or bowl full of cold water until room temperature.
If you use powdered gelatin you'll want to puree it with a hand blender to make sure there aren't any clumps.
Pour the mixture into a blender with the spruce tips and puree for 30 seconds or so, until well blended and the mixture is a brilliant green, then strain through the finest strainer you have into a mixing bowl.
Whisk the lime zest and juice into the cream-spruce mixture well (it will cause it to thicken, this is normal) then pour into your par-baked crust.
Refrigerate until set, at least a few hours and preferably overnight.
Serving
Cut the pie into slices and serve with whipped cream and a few spruce tip needles if you have some. Gently cooked wild blueberries make a good garnish too.
Notes
On the gelatinI made this both with powdered and leaf gelatin, and both will work, but I really encourage you to seek out silver leaf gelatin for cooking instead of powder. Powdered gelatin often has a set that's more firm. Leaf gelatin is the professional kitchen standard. It's cheap and once you use it, you won't go back.