KEY WEST, Fla. — Two inches of cloud-like meringue sit on top of a tart, key lime-infused custard and a buttery graham cracker crust.

It looks like a slice of pie — but it tastes like sunshine.

Key lime pie is the official dessert of the Florida Keys, craved by tourists and locals alike. And nearly every restaurant — from the gourmet to the ones that also sell live bait — is more than willing to please.

“In the middle of summer, it’s just so refreshing, like drinking a glass of lemonade,” said Charlene Griffin, a waitress who served up a slice at the Hideout Restaurant just off U.S. 1 in Key Largo. “Everybody that visits the Keys wants key lime pie.”

Traditional key lime pie has a graham cracker crust and a custard that’s yellow, not green, made of key lime juice, eggs and sweetened condensed milk. It can be topped with whipped cream or meringue.

But variations abound. At the Islamorada Fish Company, which sells about 70 pies a week at its outdoor restaurant overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, the pie is made of a whipped filling that’s less tart.

“We’re more of a family style restaurant,” explained manager Adrian Miranda. He says kids prefer the milder sweet flavor to the tart bite of a traditional pie. But not everyone is happy.

“We get a lot of key lime pie purists who say, ’This isn’t key lime pie,”’ he said.

Such purists also might be offended by the slices served at the upscale Louie’s Backyard, which are made with a gingersnap crust and garnished with berries.

“We just take a twist,” said senior waiter Ben Harris, who noted the stylish $7.25-a-slice pie is the only item other than conch chowder that has stayed on the restaurant’s menu for 20 years.

Not bad, considering that key limes aren’t even grown commercially in the Florida Keys anymore.

Most of the key lime industry in Florida was destroyed by the double-whammy of 1992’s Hurricane Andrew and citrus canker, said Terence McElroy, spokesman for the Florida Department of Agriculture. Citrus canker is a bacterial disease that makes citrus fruit develop brown lesions and drop early.

A few groves remain in Homestead, south of Miami, but otherwise the pies are made with bottled juice from Mexico or South America.

The pies are believed to originate in Key West, with the first likely made sometime after the Civil War, when canned sweetened condensed milk became popular. No one knows for sure how the delectable desert got its start, said Monroe County historian Tom Hambright, but legends abound.

One popular theory is that key lime pie was first served to William Curry, the wrecker and Key West millionaire, in the late 1800s.

Hambright hypothesized that Curry’s cook could have gotten the recipe from spongers, who lived on boats when they collected live sponges from the sea. They would often take condensed milk on the boats to have something sweet that wouldn’t spoil, Hambright said, and would likely have key limes and eggs on hand.

The pies gained popularity because they didn’t need to be cooked — the acid in lime juice actually “cooks” the filling — so women in the Keys didn’t have to heat up their kitchen in the hot summer months, when limes were most plentiful. (Now pies are cooked to prevent salmonella.)

But the written record is scarce. Hambright has a local Woman’s Club cookbook from 1927, but it doesn’t have a recipe for key lime pie.

“But again, you didn’t do that because everybody knows how to make them,” he said.

The first mention Hambright has found of the pies came in the Key West newspaper in the 1930s, with a reference to the “world-famous key lime pie.”

The message was designed for tourists, when the Florida Keys was trying to develop its tourism industry during the Depression.

“The thing to have was a slice of the world famous key lime pie,” Hambright said.

Not much has changed.

Today, one of the biggest key lime pie operations in the Keys is the Blond Giraffe, which has five shops stretching from Duval Street up to Miami and will soon open a sixth by the cruise ship port in Key West.

Founder Tania Beguinati used her Brazilian grandmother’s recipe — which features meringue, a pastry crust and a filling with just the right consistency and tartness — to win Key West’s key lime pie contest in 1999.

“The next day, everybody was in our place asking for key lime pies and we didn’t have enough,” Beguinati said.

The success, along with numerous awards to follow, catapulted her little sandwich and tea shop on Duval Street into a key lime pie powerhouse selling 1,000 pies a day, all with the same recipe and homemade crust from her first prize-winning slice.

Her stores now sell about 170 key lime items — from cookies to shampoo — along with pies served with meringue or whipped cream, and even frozen slices dipped in chocolate and served on a stick.

The “pie pop” was a hit with Chelsea and David Alexander, of Marshall, Texas, who stopped in the Blond Giraffe factory while honeymooning in Key West.

It was their first key lime pie experience since arriving in the Keys, but it wouldn’t be their last.

“We’ll get some and take some home,” David Alexander said.



Recipe for key lime pie

Key Lime P-ize Me

By The Associated Press



Crust:

1 package graham crackers

1/2 cup sugar

1/3 cup melted butter

Filling:

3 eggs

1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

3/4 cup key lime juice

1/2 pint whipped cream

Preparation:

Crush graham crackers in food processor or in large zip lock bag with rolling pin. Pour crumbs into pie pan. Add 1/4 cup sugar and mix with fork. Pour the melted butter over crumbs in pie pan. Mix and press into bottom of pie pan and up the sides. Bake at 325 degrees for approximately 8 minutes, until brown. Let cool. Whip three egg yolks with one can condensed milk in a bowl held over boiling water until frothy. The steam from the boiling water heats the egg to prevent salmonella. Gradually beat in lime juice. Pour into baked, cooled pie crust. Whip cream and add 1/4 cup sugar at end of whipping process. Spread whipped cream over pie and freeze. Take pie out of freezer and leave at room temperature for 20 minutes before serving.

Yield 8 servings

Source: Florida Department of Agriculture



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On the Net:

Florida Keys: www.fla-keys.com

The Blond Giraffe: http://www.blondgiraffe.com/

Florida Department of Agriculture: http://doacs.state.fl.us/