Key lime pie is very American isn’t it? And yesterday was Independence Day – I hope all my readers in the USA had a happy and peaceful day. For me Key lime pie is associated with Florida and the happy holidays I have spent there with our friends. It’s a tradition – first grocery shop includes a big pie, which we then have for dessert every night for a few nights!

Last year my friend gave me a bottle of Key lime juice to bring home, and somehow I have only just now got round to using it. Don’t know how that happened, because making a Key lime pie with ready made juice is as easy as – pie!

So what’s the difference between an ordinary lime and a Key lime? Well part of the clue is in the name – the Key lime was traditionally grown in the Florida Keys, and I guess that’s why you can buy a Key lime pie just about everywhere in Florida. The lime is sometimes known as a Mexican or West Indian lime, and has a distinctive flavour compared to the more ubiquitous Persian lime. I’m sure fresh lime juice is always superior in taste than bottled but as Key limes are smaller than regular limes you need to juice about 20 to make a pie. Hmmmm. It’s way easier and quicker to use the bottled stuff, and to be honest it looked and smelled like the real thing.

I decided to make a bar version of the pie, mainly because portion control is a whole lot easier that way. It is simplicity itself to make, and I used this recipe from the Martha Stewart website. As it happens this weekend there was a really good Felicity Cloake ‘how to make … the perfect key lime pie’. Unfortunately today I can’t link to it. But in a few days it will be available on the Guardian website I’m sure. (It’s almost exactly the same as the Martha Stewart one in fact.)

This is definitely something I’d make again – even if I have to squeeze the limes by hand 😉.