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A few years ago, my mom started making this lime pie. She calls it Key Lime Pie as most lime pies are called, but it’s made with regular limes, not key limes. It’s so unbelievably simple to throw together and can be made well in advance and keeps well in your freezer for days, if it manages to last that long in your house. 🙂 She made it last week when we were home for a visit for our mexican feast night. I can’t think of a better night than laughing and reminiscing, flipping through old photo albums with my family while enjoying this amazing pie! I told her I couldn’t wait to share it with all of you! It’s so light and refreshing. We love it frozen and it thaws quickly and is easily cut and served frozen.

This pie is great for if you are traveling or on vacation. If you are renting a house or condo for vacation and want to make some simple meals and desserts and the kitchen isn’t stocked with big appliances, you could still whip up this pie. You don’t need a big mixer, you could use a hand mixer, or even get away with just doing it the old-fashioned way by hand. You could even whip this up while camping if you have the space to keep it cold. Another option would be to use small individual graham cracker pies and just divide the filling among them. It’s so easy – I can’t wait for you to give it a try!

Next time I make it, I may go a little crazy and make my own graham cracker or vanilla wafer crust and use a spring form pan and double the filling ingredients so that my pie is extra tall and pretty.

Margarita Lime Pie

Ingredients:

1 Graham Cracker Ready Made Pie Crust

1 14 oz can sweetened condensed milk

3 good-sized limes (you’ll use the zest and the juice), plus one more lime for slices for garnish if you like

1/2 C heavy whipping cream whipped with 1 teas sugar (you could substitute 1/2 C of cool whip here instead, which is how my mom makes it. That way you won’t need to worry about needing any mixers.)

Tools:

Microplane or zester is needed.

A juicer of some sort will really help you out, but you could elbow grease too.

Directions:

If using heavy whipping cream instead of cool whip, whip your cream with 1 teas sugar until stiff peaks form using the whisk attachment or beaters. Place mixing bowl in the fridge until ready to use it.

Zest and juice your 3 limes in a medium bowl. I recommend using some sort of juicer to help you really get your money’s worth of lime juice. My lovely glass juicer is an antique and it’s so handy! Lime pulp is a good thing, include it if you can.

Add the whole can of sweetened condensed milk to the lime juice and zest.

If using heavy whipping cream, take out your mixing bowl with whipped cream from fridge. Add the milk and lime juice and zest mixture to the whipped cream and mix just for a minute with the paddle attachment. You could also mix this by hand.

If using cool whip instead of heavy whipping cream, just add the 1/2 C of cool whip to the milk and lime juice and zest mixture and mix well, either by hand or using mixer if you have one.

Pour the filling into the prepared graham cracker pie crust.

Smooth out the top with a rubber spatula.

Place pie in freezer for at least 2 1/2 – 3 hours to set up. You could make this in advance and freeze overnight too. Even better in my opinion. When pie is set and frozen or partially frozen, cut and serve.

If you like, you could put a half lime wedge on each slice as garnish. I didn’t bother since we just wanted to dive right into the pie.

Leftovers: I return the pie to the freezer (if there’s any left) and keep it there so it’s nice and cold and frozen, but you could also just keep in the fridge if you like. It just won’t be as set up.

Enjoy!