Key Lime Pie Ice Cream

Sweety, tangy Key Lime Pie Ice cream complete with a caramelized graham cracker crust swirl. 

"Does that really say nine minutes?" 

"Yep."

That is the extent of a typical metro conversation. Like airplaines, elevators, and the men's room talking is discouraged. We say as little as possible, listen to music, read papers, and try our hardest to ignore being sardined into our idealistic-for-a-terrorist-plot metro cars. It's easy to pick out tourists, and people who rarely ride the metro, as their lack of awareness for the 75 hostages forcedly singing la la la internally over their conversation about a new pair of shoes puts a large red target on their foreheads. The last stranger who talked to me on the metro made degrading comments about my boyfriend-at-the-time, grabbed my hand and attempted to kiss me. The guys before that were black, and decided to include me, the little white girl, in their conversation about what happens to black men who rape white girls. Rape is not a topic I encourage on a first acquaintance, especially when the nature of it is so similar to our respective genders and races, but it proved worthwhile as I was very grateful for their gentlemanly help with my "big @$$ bags" getting off the train.

Monday's ride home from work (yes, work on a national holiday), was the G-3 of my metro experience bingo card. The guy who asked me to validate his annoyance with the delayed Red Line train continued to talk, about work, about life, about travel, art, music, working out, pool tables, trivia, and mixed mediums. I now presume I know him better than I know my father, and the best part is he calls himself C-Money. No fewer than four times did my disgruntled sarcasm invoke a "You are so funny!" He somehow liked me enough to ask for my phone number. I'm still unsure at what point I gave the impression of being charming. As far as I can remember all I ever said was "Yep."

Yep. So....the Spectrum of Awesomeness behind this ice cream went like this: C-Money to Miami to Key Limes to Key Lime Pie to Summer Time to Ice Cream and most importantly to Not Working On Federal Holidays. The ice cream at least had to happen. Caramelized graham crackers in Key Lime Pie Ice cream is about the only rival in awesomeness to a metro ride with C-Money.

Key Lime Pie Ice Cream

1/4 cup butter

1/2 cups brown sugar

1/8 cup corn syrup

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/8 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

8 squares of graham crackers, in quarter size pieces

2 eggs
3/4 cups brown sugar
2 cups cream
1 cup milk

1 can sweetened condensed milk

1 1/3 cup key lime cocktail syrup

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Place graham cracker pieces in a small bowl.

In a medium saucepan melt butter. Stir in brown sugar, corn syrup and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil without stirring 4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in soda and vanilla. Pour in a thin stream over graham cracker pieces, stirring to coat.

Place in two large shallow baking dishes and bake in preheated oven, stirring every 15 minutes, for half an hour. Remove from oven and let cool completely before breaking into pieces.

In a stand mixer combine the eggs and sugar.  Beat for one minute until light and fluffy. 

Gently mix in the cream, milk, sweetened condensed milk, and key lime cocktail syrup. 

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker. Allow the ice cream to churn until finished. When transferring ice cream into a suitable freezing container layer with caramelized graham crackers. 

Mojito Snowball Cookies

A take on a classic snowball cookie, these cookies have a hint of lime, mint, and rum flavoring to give them a hint of the refreshing taste of a mojito. 

Sunday's Iron Chef Lime dinner was INSANE! We have never had such a large turnout! I could hardly breathe! The votes were in and everyone LOVED the lime challenge! We had dishes in every shape and size! Fiesta Chicken Fettuccine, turkey, lime bars, three cheesecakes, lime sherbet with blueberry coulis, pad thai, pulled pork salad with lime cilantro dressing, nachos, four different drinks, yogurt, lime coconut cake, and the list goes on and on!

It took THREE of us to gather the votes and its was close! One vote either way and we were looking at a three way tie between the lime sherbet with blueberry coulis, the pulled pork salad with lime cilantro dressing, and a lime and white chocolate no bake cheesecake. Personally I voted for the pulled pork....because I left the dressing off and was happily oblivious to the taste of lime! After five minutes of calling out votes we had a winner! The no bake cheesecake! Congratulations to Eve and Dave on their winning dish! The recipe is posted below!

If your new to my blog, you may not know that I am not a huge fan of lemons and limes. I love oranges, tangerines and clementines....but....lime? lemon? Not my favorite. I'm sure you know the feeling where, if you don't like a certain flavor it's ALL you taste in the dish. So while I can taste the lime easily in my cookies, it turns out that others couldn't! I HATE that. Everyone agreed the cookies were delicious, just not as "limey" as a mojito cookie should be. Booooo. So, take my recipe and consider it to be a "to taste" guideline. If it were up to me, the cookies would just be mint. No lime. But that's not the challenge!

Cheers!

Mojito Snowball Cookies

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 cup cornstarch

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup powdered sugar

2 tablespoons lime cocktail syrup (to taste. I prefer a very light lime flavor)

2 tablespoons rum or 1 tsp. rum extract

2 teaspoons peppermint sugar (made from a handful of peppermint candies)

1 cup powdered sugar

Using a food processor, grind a handful of peppermint candies into a fine powder.

Whisk flour and cornstarch in medium bowl to blend. Using electric mixer, beat butter and 1/2 cup powdered sugar in large bowl until light and fluffy. Mix in lime juice, rum or rum extract, and peppermint sugar. Beat in flour mixture until smooth. Refrigerate dough until just firm, about 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

Using scant 1 tablespoon for each, form dough into balls and place on prepared sheets, spacing 1 inch apart.

Bake cookies until pale golden on top and browned on bottom, about 23 minutes. Transfer baking sheets to racks; immediately sift generous amount of powdered sugar over cookies. Cool cookies completely on baking sheets.

Key Lime Mousse Pie

as adapted from Paula Deen

2 cups crushed graham crackers

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter, melted

6 tablespoons fresh key lime juice

1 1/4 ounces (1 envelope) package unflavored gelatin

2 1/2 cups heavy cream, divided

10 ounces finest quality white chocolate, chopped

24 ounces cream cheese, softened

1 cup sugar

2 tablespoons lime zest

1 1/2 ounces white chocolate, grated or shaved into curls, for garnish

Mix together the cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter. Press the mixture into the bottom and 1-inch up the sides of a 10-inch springform pan. Set aside.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, add the lime juice. Whisk in the gelatin and 1/2 cup of the heavy cream and bring to a simmer. Remove the pan from the heat. Add 10 ounces of white chocolate and stir until smooth. Allow to cool.

Using an electric mixer, blend together the cream cheese, sugar and lime zest in a medium bowl, until smooth. Slowly beat in the cooled white chocolate mixture into cream cheese mixture.

Using clean, dry beaters, beat the remaining 2-cups heavy cream in a small bowl, until it forms soft peaks. Fold it into the white chocolate mixture and pour into the pie crust. Cover and freeze overnight.

Remove from freezer and run a sharp knife around inside of springform pan to help loosen the pie. Release springform ring from the bottom of the pan and transfer the pie to a serving plate. Grate or curl the white chocolate over the top. Cut into wedges with a knife that has been dipped into hot water and serve.

Cilantro Lime Ice Cream

Tangy, sweet Cilantro Lime Ice Cream is the perfect end to a spicy evening!

Well I’m back from Kansas! But I’ll post about that on Wednesday when I’ve had a little more time to sleep, catch up on life and see just how bad my hair looked in that humidity!

Butchie is also back! Say hi, Butchie! [Heeyyyyyyyy. -B.]

Okay, now that she thinks I’m ridiculous...Butch had a week off last week, by which we mean she was working late because her night editor had to go to the hospital. Lovely. That’s what you get for having a real career in DC: long hours and bosses who think everything is do or die. It’s August in DC for heaven’s sake! This city shuts down in August…except apparently for her office. [Well, that's the problem. Normally there are several night editors, but this time of year everyone is on vacation so there's only one. ANYWAY THAT IS A BORING STORY THE END. -B.] I love August. My work load gets cut in half and I still have interns. Aaaaah. So relaxing. Remind me of this in December when I hate my job.

But since she’s been stressed we went for the easy night and just picked up dinner, threw together some ice cream, and kicked back with episodes of shows she doesn’t have time [or a cable connection -B.] to watch. Delightfully calm….until you dig into that ice cream! Woo! Tangy! Wakes you right up! Calm it is not! Definitely one of a kind! [It would follow Mexican food really nicely. The cilantro is understated, but present, and the citrus punch in an ice cream, rather than a sorbet, is wonderful and unexpected. -B.]

Cilantro Lime Ice Cream

1 packet unflavored gelatin

¾ cup lime juice

¾ cup sugar

½ cup cilantro

1 egg

1 cup heavy whipping cream

½ cup milk

Pour the gelatin into the lime juice and allow to sit for five minutes. Combine the lime juice mixture and sugar into a small sauce pan. Bring to a boil and stir until the sugar dissolves. Remove from heat and add cilantro. Allow to seep for 15 minutes. Strain out the cilantro. Cool the cilantro lime mixture completely.

In a stand mixer combine the egg and cilantro syrup. Beat for 1 minute. Stir in milk and cream. Do not whip.

Transfer the mixture to an ice cream maker. Allow the ice cream to churn until finished and freeze according to the manufacturer’s instructions.