Key Lime Pie for Cheaters. No Apology Necessary.

For Father's Day this year I had my dad and stepmom over for a nice lunch. I made chicken fried chicken, chipotle and white cheddar garlic mashed potatoes, spinach salad and key lime pie.

My dad has a huge sweet tooth so initially I had higher ambitions than key lime pie using bottled key lime juice. But being pretty pregnant at that point something had to give and as I looked at the cheesecake recipe I'd pulled out the night before I realized it was a little ambitious in addition to making everything else including the salad dressing from scratch.

I found a bottle of Nellie and Joe's Key West Lime Juice in my pantry along with a chocolate graham cracker pie crust and off we went. And here's the thing. It didn't matter. I'd put this pie up against a made from scratch one any day. I jazzed things up a little with a sweetened sour cream topping and fresh lime zest. The sour cream topping was a component of my mom's cheesecake growing up and it added a nice counterpart to the sweet key lime filling (something a little different than whipped cream.)

If I had one thing to do over I'd have made the chocolate graham cracker crust from scratch. It wouldn't have added much time to the recipe and probably would've taken it up a whole other level but in a pinch you can't beat a tasty pie that you can whip together in five minutes flat.

Nellie and Joe's Key Lime Pie
*Slightly Adapted by Alisa Wixom

Ingredients:
1 (9 inch) prepared chocolate graham cracker pie shell (regular is fine too)
14 oz can sweetened condensed milk
3 egg yolks
1/2 cup Nellie and Joe's Key West Lime Juice (from a bottle found in grocery store)
1 (16 oz) carton sour cream
heaping 1/4 cup powdered sugar
zest of 1 lime

How To:
Preheat oven to 350. Combine the condensed milk, egg yolks and lime juice together in a medium bowl. Blend until smooth. Pour the filling into the prepared pie shell and bake for 15 minutes. Allow to cool for at least 30 minutes on a pie rack. While the pie cools, combine the sour cream and powdered sugar together until well mixed. Spread the mixture evenly over the whole pie (you probably won't need or want all of it but up to you.) Garnish the top with lime zest and a thin slice of lime if desired.

Cover lightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until chilled. Will last for 3 days in the fridge.