TWD: Florida Pie...the Tartelette Way.

This week's Tuesday's with Dorie was chosen by Dianne's Dishes and she chose Florida Pie. I am not a key lime fan..it is never the dessert I would ever choose on a menu. Lemon yes...but lime..I'd rather have a chocolate molten cake! Limes are pretty and smell good but...dessert?



But in the spirit of being challenged by the TWD crew...aka I didn't sign up just to make fun things I am absolutely dying to eat like last week's Peanut Butter Torte, but rather to do the ones that I might not ever try on my own.

So I decided to switch it up a little bit...because I didn't want to end up with one big 9" or even a 6" pie that we didn't eat. I have friends who like (LOVE!) key lime, so I turned to individual servings again. My favorite thing to do is to take something and make it miniature. Portion control.



I used this molten cake pan with really deep wells. I also found these super cute little individual tart pans for 39 cents each at BBB, so I lined 9 of those with the crust too. Made my own crust with cinnamon grahams, sugar, salt, and butter, froze and baked...though in 20/20 hindsight since you bake the pie as well you don't need to bake the crust I would imagine.

Since Monday was our anniversary, I wouldn't typically have all the time I would on a regular Monday eve to finish my pie before Tuesday, when I'd have to assemble the thread and pictures to post. So made crusts on Sunday, and then Monday evening between 'home from work' and 'anniversary dinner'...I made the filling, baked and froze.

I am not a merengue fan, so not only do I not like key lime pie, but I don't like merengue either. I am a big fan of heavy whipped cream toppings on things like lemon tarts and banana cream pie, so I went that route early on Tuesday morning, even though making the merengue sounded interesting.



The recipe came together fine even though I was unsure. First off I have never made a pie like this before. I wasn't sure if making modifications to it would mean it 'never set' like a cold pie, even though you bake this one.

After reading the PQ thread, I made some modifications thanks to comments from other ladies...aka one mentioned she used evaporated milk instead of cream and I was all over that, the heavy cream in Dorie's recipes just KILLS me mentally. So I went that route. I also used 2% condensed milk. Whole Foods was OUT of Key Limes (who's out of key limes!?) so I used regular. The evaporated milk and coconut never quite thickened enough for me but it did reduce, so I just used a sieve to capture coconut and used that for the bottoms mostly. The egg, lime, condensed milk combo was interesting too. Again, I was unsure if it would stay liquidy. Funny how since I didn't really care about eating it, I was not AS worried about it looking wonky.



BUT the baking took care of all of all my worries. The baking took the liquid and make it more custardy. Again, never having made anything like this before, was unsure what it should look like after 12 min in the oven. Since my oven runs a little warmer in the back, the back 2 pielettes got a little too toasty and 'fell' when they came out of the oven...this recipe 'puffs' a bit.



Out of the 8 mini tarts and the 6 pielettes I made...the mini tarts were the ones that seemed to come out visually the cutest. Getting them out of their containers might have proven an issue, but the freezing helped pop them out a bit. The molten cake pan had REALLY deep wells which I would have love to fill and make really tall pielettes but I didn't have enough filling. They are super fun looking piled with heavy cream though!


Pielette


Tartlette

As I removed and assembled the mini tarts and pielettes, I tasted some of the filling as it came off on my fingers etc. Didn't taste as good solo...but LATER on I had a slice of one of the tartelttes...actually very good and very tart.



I took them to work and the gals who love lime seemed to really like them, said they loved how tart they were and not too sweet. So a win if you like lime.

Thankfully this is really something I don't have to worry about wanting to eat a ton of, unlike last week's PB torte, but it sure looks tasty. I can't wait to see everyone else's TWD entries, it's my best part of Tuesdays...enjoy!