Strawberry Key Lime Pie

Whether a sweet or savory dish, I really love the punch that the tartness of citrus adds. I think there is something so wonderful about the combination or sweet and tart in a dessert like this Strawberry Key Lime Pie. Key lime pie is actually one of the simplest desserts you can make, there are only a handful of ingredients and is nearly effortless. The special twist here is the addition of STRAWBERRY! The crust is just melted butter and graham cracker crumbs. The filling is low fat sweetened condensed milk, egg yolks, key lime  juice {fun story on that in a minute} and freeze dried strawberries. A bit of fresh whipped cream and lime zest pretties up this pie wonderfully. The result is spectacular and is quite the refreshing dessert!!! 

I’ve made key lime pie many times and love it but I wanted to do something a little bit different, so the idea of adding strawberry to the mix came about. Now using fresh strawberries I knew wouldn’t work because it would add far too much liquid, so how does one add great strawberry flavor? Freeze dried strawberries are the perfect addition not only for the taste but that very pretty color.

Now for the lime juice… I’ve always used Nellie & Joes Key Lime Juice found in the grocery stores but could not for the life of me find it this time around. I have no idea what the explanation is but I was determined to make this for our family 4th of July BBQ so I bought a bag of limes and got to squeezing. Not the exact same flavor as a key lime but it worked out just fine aside from my hand cramping from all the juicing {yes, thats a lot of juice, I made a couple of these pies and still had extra juice… great to add some flavor to your drinking water!}.