Coconut Key Lime Pie

Ingredients:
14 oz can of sweetened condensed milk (fat free is fine)
3 egg yolks
2/3 cup toasted coconut
1/3 cup key lime juice*
2 1/2 teaspoons key lime zest
9 inch round coconut crust or graham cracker crust

Directions:
Preheat oven to 300. In a large mixing bowl, using your electric mixer, beat the egg yolks, lime juice and zest until the eggs are creamy. Slowly add condensed milk and toasted coconut and mix until well combined. Pour into crust and bake 15 minutes or until the pie is "set" and no longer feels liquid to the touch. Cool on wire rack, refrigerate.



*Note: For an authentic pie, you need the juice of fresh key limes. Using a juicer is the most efficient way to extract the most amount of juice from tiny key limes limes. If you have to use bottled juice, make sure it is from actual key limes (the juice will be a pale yellow) and not just (Persian) lime juice with citric acid added to make it tart. Of course, you could just use regular lime juice but then it won't be a "key lime pie".

My thoughts:

I am lucky to live near several great grocery stores. This results in my having access to fresh key limes several times a year. My husband loves key lime pie so I came up with this recipe for him. I basically used the same recipe I usually use to make key lime pie and added coconut to it. I also baked it in a homemade coconut pie crust instead of a graham cracker crust. I bet some people reading this will think that it would be coconut overload to have coconut in the pie and into the crust, but I assure you, it isn't. The amount of coconut in the pie is just enough that it ties the flavors of the pie together.