Kitchen Experiments -- Key Lime Meringue

So we had some key limes to use. A lot of key limes in fact. Enough key limes that when juiced made over 1/3 C of juice. So what to do with key lime juice became the question. I  decided to make a key lime meringue. I essentially took an Alton Brown lemon meringue pie (found here) and modified it a bit. The biggest modification was substituting key lime juice for the lemon juice. I noted the modifications with italics. (Yes, I believe I can modify something that even the great Alton Brown puts down as a recipe.)

Ingredients
Lemon Filling:

4 egg yolks (reserve whites for meringue)
1/3 cup cornstarch
1 1/2 cups water 

1 1/3 cups sugar -- I used half regular sugar, half vanilla sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup key lime juice + a splash of lemon juice
1/2 tablespoon finely grated key lime zest

1/2 TBS vanilla
1 (9-inch) pre-baked pie shell -- I used a basic pie crust recipe that had no foods I couldn't eat
1 recipe Meringue, recipe follows

Directions

 

Adjust the oven rack to the middle position. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.

Whisk egg yolks in medium size mixing bowl and set aside.

In a medium saucepan, combine water, sugar, and salt. Whisk to combine. Turn heat on medium and, stirring frequently, bring mixture to a boil. Slowly add in the cornstarch at this point. Boil for 1 minute, or until clear. Remove from heat and gradually, 1 whisk-full at a time, add hot mixture to egg yolks and stir until you have added at least half of the mixture.

Return egg mixture to saucepan, turn heat down to low and cook, stirring constantly, for 1 more minute. Remove from heat and gently stir in butter, vanilla, lemon juice, and zest until well combined. Pour mixture into pie shell and top with meringue while filling is still hot. Make sure meringue completely covers filling and that it goes right up to the edge of the crust. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes or until meringue is golden. Remove from oven and cool on a wire rack. Make sure pie is cooled completely before slicing. Refrigerate before slicing to ensure it is cool through.

 

Meringue

4 egg whites
1 pinch cream of tartar I didn't add any since I didn't have any
2 tablespoons vanilla sugar

Place egg whites and cream of tartar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form and then gradually add sugar and continue beating until stiff peaks form, approximately 1 to 2 minutes. Use to top key lime filling.

 

The meringue is nothing special but the vanilla sugar makes it taste a bit calmer with the tartness of the key limes. Beware this much key lime is eye popping tart.

Chris really likes it and I really like it. It would work well with the lemon filling as well. I think I would make the same modifications to the lemon pie (vanilla and such) as I did to the key lime pie. Chris thinks it is better than lemon meringue, though that may be what happens next week as we have a bunch of lemons that need to be used soon. :) I will probably make some lemon poppyseed muffins and then a lemon meringue pie. 

 

This was my second attempt at a meringue ever and my first attempt at a meringue at altitude. It didn't rise as much as I would have liked, but we will see if it gets better with the lemon meringue. I knew I couldn't do it last week because of all the rain, so it was nice to get the drier weather the past couple of days.

 

We originally thought of making a traditional key lime pie, but since cheesecakes at altitude are practically impossible we opted to try something completely new. As with most of our kitchen experiments it turned out well. Even scrapping the pan for the filling was tasty stuff. 

 

Okay, after writing this I suppose I need to go get a piece of pie.

April Showers

April showers will hopefully bring lots of good herbs and vegetables for us in our garden. We have a few things sprouting so hopefully they will grow, grow, grow and we will have some fresh herbs and vegetables in our garden this year. It helps that all week it rained. It rained and rained and rained in fact. I feel really bad for my friends and family west of us (which is most of the US if I'm honest) are still in drought conditions, though they are getting some of the wet weather a few days before we do. :)

I like the rain because otherwise we are all having a terrible time with allergies. It helps keep the air cleaner as the trees are spitting pollen like their lives depend on it. It will stop raining by around 10 am and by the time I drive home there is a nice green layer of pollen on my car, that's how much stuff is sprouting here.

We have started giving A some daily anti-histamine as everyone at daycare is saying how much her nose just runs and runs (nothing but clear) when they go outside. Since she will be 2 next month, we've decided to give her the "half-dose" and see how that treats her. She seemed to do okay with it today, so that's a good sign for us. The doctors won't say she has allergies since she isn't two and it is supposed to take 2 years for them to develop. However, since Chris and I both have really bad allergies it makes sense that they have been passed down to her. I just wonder how soon we can give her allergy shots.

This week was otherwise uneventful for the most part. We went to work, made dinner, went to bed, did it all again the next day. Chris is on a more normal work schedule for the next several weeks so he will be getting home around five and able to see us more in the evenings. :) Unfortunately, I have been told that we are working the next several Saturdays. I got Friday afternoon off as a "reward" but then was told we would be working Saturdays for the for see able future that were required. I told them it won't be happening. We do have several things happening in May -- a family visit, a 2 year b'day party, and then a Memorial Day trip to VA planned with our Memorial Day pals. I wonder how many others will also put their foot down. I understand a lot of the politics/financial stuff behind what is going on and the fact that the company needs to make money. However, it is happening at the expense of the employees and I wouldn't be surprised if people start leaving the company. It is bad enough that a pregnant lady at work had to get a doctor's note to only work 8 hour days, five days a week, and has specific requirements set up by her doctor for how many hours she can be on her feet at a time. Moral is super low at work which makes it that much more difficult to get there.

Anyway, we've experimented in the kitchen some and I want to write that post up, see you then!

Car Crash

Well this week started with A crashing a car at school. It was one of those little tikes police car jobs. She was trying to get out of it, but managed to topple out of it with it falling around her. She banged up her right eye pretty good, but in true form it is almost gone. It was rather cute when I walked into the play area and asked her what happened. "I crash," she responded. 

Then Tuesday we forgot the diaper bag. Chris saved the day and brought it to her. He then got to stay in her class for a while and meet everyone. When I picked her up that day all the staff was talking about how they got to meet A's daddy. Wednesday, one of her teachers even mentioned it when I picked her up saying, "When he left, I saw a side to A that I didn't know existed," since A had a breakdown when Chris left on Tuesday. 

After that the week seemed to fly by. Chris did check-out for most of the classes so he will get a more normal schedule now. He survived he second semester teaching. We survived our FDA audit. We actually passed without any major citations. This is a rare occurrence, so that means the FDA will be contacting us to make drugs when necessary. This week our water system is going to be down, so hopefully we can catch up on paper work.

Spring has Sprung!

Well, we finally got some spring weather. It was cold and snowy through Thursday (yes, we got snow on Thursday :)), but this weekend has been fantastic. We spent most of yesterday outside clearing an area for a garden. We want to do some herbs and a few vegetables. We just had to clear an area that might get enough sun during the day. We think we've found an area, so hopefully it will work. We have some herbs in window boxes along our driveway, but will put a few more in the garden area. Chris managed to hack his way through a fair amount of trees. We also discovered why nothing would grow in that area of the yard -- it was overgrown with roots. After we turned it once we rooted it. We will turn it again next Saturday and root some more, then hopefully plant as we have to start from seed. :) A really liked helping to play in the dirt. A played in the dirt so much that she went to bed at 730 and woke up at 830 this morning. She did get up at 630, shut our door, and went to stand at the fridge since she was apparently thirsty, but then went back to sleep.

She also liked it when the puppy from down the road came and played with her. The puppy, Daphne, has a broken electric fence so wonders to our house a lot. Daphne will play fetch incessantly. She is some kind of bird dog and will just go. She will also play catch, with thrilled A. Daphne showed up as we were trying to console A since we wanted her to leave her Star Wars puppy inside. We then tempted A to forget about the puppy inside since there was a real puppy to play with outside. One really cool thing was that Daphne actually belongs to the mother of one of the couples from church. The male is over tech stuff so he and Chris work together for church stuff a lot. They also have 2 girls, one a little older than A, and one a little younger than A. If you remember the veggietale post from a few weeks back, it is the little girl in the picture with A.

Since we didn't get fun pictures this weekend since our hands were covered in dirt, here are some from last week's trip to Build-A-Bear.

Getting ready to stuff their new best friends

Hugging their new best friends

Ready to leave with new friends in boxes. They didn't stay in the box very long though...

He is Risen!

He is Risen, Indeed! Yesterday Chris set up church, mom and Chris took the girls to the park, and we dyed eggs. Here are some fun pictures of the egg dying that we did. We only had a dozen hard boiled eggs to dye, but that was about the girls attention span so it worked out well. A didn't quite understand that she wasn't supposed to put her fingers in the dye and ended up with multi-colored fingers, which she didn't want.

This morning the Easter Bunny came and hid the colored eggs and some filled with jelly beans! The girls had a couple of Easter baskets (bags since NJ has to take hers on the plane) left for them with a great moniker, "Something you want, Something you need. Something to wear, something to read!"  So each got some bubbles (want), some clothes (need/wear), and a Dr. Seuss book (read). They had a fun time finding the eggs, but were rather done with it after about ten minutes. After the egg hunt we went to church. We helped clean up church, we had lunch and an afternoon nap. :) Here are some pictures from the egg hunt and some on the porch this afternoon.My niece was a bit more cooperative in the picture taking department, so consequently there are a few more of her on this page than A.

Good Friday

Since we got Friday off of work, my mom, my niece, NJ, A and I went to the Biltmore. There were supposed to be blooms everywhere, but as we got close to a foot of snow early in the week (Monday through Wednesday it snowed! :)) I wasn't super surprised that we didn't have flowers to see.

We only went through the lower half of the house, but got to see the swimming pool, bowling lanes and servants' quarters. It was about the attention span of the little girls, so it was a good choice for us. We did manage to play on the grounds a fair amount. We got ice cream in the ice cream parlor and then rolled in the grass, played behind trees, etc just on the grounds. Here are some of my favorite pictures from the day.

The girls got the typical, "You are such a big help for your mom and little sister!" comments to NJ. She would then correct them and say, "She isn't my baby sister. She's my baby cousin!" You can see that they ran and ran and ran! They also went up and down the stairs.

After the Biltmore we went to Build-A-Bear. It was a blast for the girls. NJ picked out a pink kitten and wanted it to meow. A picked out a puppy and wanted it to play Star Wars. We tried very hard to get her to put something else in her puppy, but she would have none of it. She clapped and giggled each time the Star Wars Theme was played. Who knew we had a John Williams fan on our hands? I will try and post some pictures soon of that, but they are on my phone instead of the camera memory card. The best part was driving home we got to see snow, some pretty parts of the Parkway, and the girls CRASHED. I mean they were talking, chattering, giggling and then utter and complete silence. It was quite entertaining for mom and me.

Chris had to work on Friday as he stayed home Wednesday with A, who had been throwing up. She managed to get over the bug fairly quickly as all she did was projectile vomit for about 12 hours. She never ran a temp or anything, just wouldn't/couldn't eat.

A, Ant Hunter Extraordinaire

We have been having the huge black ants that are seeking new colonies in our bathroom lately. Why our bathroom we aren't sure, but that's where they are coming from. They love our tub and the walls of the house. Anytime we put A on the toilet (since she is at about 80% proficient at saying she has to go before she wets her diaper/training pants) she seems to find a handful. We will see none, but she pops up with, "Uh-Oh" which means she spots one moving somewhere. She will also find them and squash them, take them to Chris, and hand them to him so that he can throw them down the toilet or in the trash. She will tell him which one it needs to be. We've discovered that caffeine and ants don't mix well. We also know that squashing them is supposed to leave a pheromone that indicates "don't come this way" to following ants. However, the best way is to vacuum the ants up, as apparently the whole "missing pheromone" indicates more trouble than a dead ant.

This past week was pretty good. Chris got back into the swing of school. His labs went well and he managed to get some stuff done on the equipment at church. I got a lot of stuff done, moved offices (if you can call my new place an office, let's suffice it to say it feels enough like a demotion that I should be looking for a different job), reviewed a few dozen documents for chemistry, had a few meetings, so a basic week.

A had a very exciting week at daycare. She managed to only wet her diaper once, that is including naps and playing outside. Since the weather the beginning of last week was gorgeous they played outside a lot. She apparently likes to climb and will occasionally get "stuck" about a foot off of the ground. She climbs much higher than that here at home and can get down with no problems, so I think she is playing the teacher.

March Madness has brought a lot of excitement here. Both Chris and I are in work brackets, so we'll see who wins. I wasn't doing so badly as of Friday, but that was before Georgetown and Gonzaga lost. I was seriously thinking about going upset crazy, but thought better of it. Who knew that it would be the order of the dance this year? I think both Chris and I are good Big 12 fans and have KU winning it all. A isn't sure what's going on since we are watching basketball over letting her watch Veggietales. She falls asleep to the basketball, but not really to the VeggieTales. She really really likes VeggieTales, so she will sit and hum the theme song for us as we watch our basketball. Since we really only turn the TV on for sports or weather updates I suppose she'll just have to learn. :) I hope your brackets are going well.