These are key lime, you see. The very best of summer citrus condensed into a buttery, decadent cookie. Regular snowballs, move over. It’s time for a warm-weather makeover!

Well, that’s assuming we get any warm weather soon. It’s been raining for like 17 straight days. Why did nobody warn me about DC being moved across the country to Seattle?

Last week, somebody made a comment on FB about how people get really whiny about rain and how it’s no big deal. I’m guessing that this person’s mood is not at the mercy of the elements, and I’m jealous. I really need sunshine to feel happy.

Also, it’s apparently good for my bones to get lots of Vitamin D, which is easier when the sun’s out. No, no, I’m not advocating sun worship of any kind. Protect your skin with sunscreen, always!

The downside of that is, of course, less natural exposure to Vitamin D. For some people that’s no big deal, but I recently failed a bone density test with flying colors. I’ve been very good with the sunscreen, but not so great with the calcium.

So here I am, loyal readers, asking you for tips. I’m not much of a dairy person, which I realize is a problem. I don’t like yogurt (unless it’s frozen) and I could never eat enough cheese to make it worthwhile to my bones. So what else can I eat? I hear kale is good, and spinach. Give me some recipes or ideas! No beans, please. I’m picky.

In the meantime, I’m all good on the cookie front. I get plenty of cookies. If only they had calcium!

I’m a snowball girl through and through. These are easily my favorite kind of cookie. The texture gets me every time. It’s because the dough (egg-free, so you can eat as you work!) is made with powdered sugar instead of granulated, so these have the most melt-in-your-mouth, velvety feel.

To spice things up, I added in a little bit of lime juice and a lot of lime zest. The zest is in both the cookie dough and in the powdered sugar that the cookies get rolled in. I wanted to find key limes (and I still will, thus the title of this post), but all I could get for this baking day were the regular kind. Either way, it’ll taste amazing!

It’s rainy out and I want some awesome, sunshiny calcium. Help a girl out!

This crust, fellow dessert lovers, is the one. While traditional key lime pie has graham cracker crust, this one is made of ground almonds and white chocolate. Do you want to guess which crust is better?

If you guessed graham cracker, you are just plain wrong. This pie crust is just beyond all my wildest expectations and dreams. It’s such a perfect base for tart, creamy key lime filling. That’s what I get for thinking creatively!

You can look at gluten-free desserts in one of two ways. One way, they’re a lesser version of an original recipe, often higher in sugar and ultimately disappointing. I don’t truck with that. I never have, and I never will.

The other way makes much more sense. Use natural ingredients (the less processed the better), don’t add extra fat or sugar, and come away with a dessert that’s not trying to be a faded copy of its gluten-laded counterpart. In other words, change the script. Change the rules. Be inventive. It might involve more thinking up front, but it sure does pay off.

Whenever I eat key lime pie, I think about the first time I ever tasted it. I was all of 25, dating Kenny, and we’d gone on our first vacation together to Florida. Our rationale was that if we went to a town full of retirees, we’d be the hottest people there. And it kind of worked!

Our flight was massively delayed (we were dumb enough to go on December 26th), so when we finally got to the hotel, we were exhausted. All we had energy for was the hotel restaurant, which happened to be on the water. Not half bad, right? I ordered a margarita and a slice of key lime pie, my very first.

It was nothing short of magical. The whole day of delayed flights and missed connections just melted away. I was in the warm Floridian night air, staring at the man I was falling in love with, drinking a perfect frozen drink and eating the best pie ever. Since that night, key lime pie has been a favorite.

It makes perfect sense, then, that I make a key lime pie that Kenny can actually eat without getting an upset stomach. This crust is not only gluten-free, but it’s one of my favorite pie crusts this season. And you all know that I’ve made a lot of pie crust over the past month.

It’s pretty simple: you take ground almond or almond meal (make it yourself or buy a bag at Trader Joe’s for cheap) and mix it with a melted white chocolate and butter combo. Add in some brown sugar for caramelized goodness, and you’re golden!

The crust is a sweet base for the notoriously tangy filling. Key lime pie is typically a warmer weather dessert, but I like to get a taste of Florida as I’m baking pie after pie for Thanksgiving. It’s a refreshing yet unpredictable option for your holiday table. If you want to wow your GF-eating friends with a showstopper pie, this is the one!

Nothing screams Cinco de Mayo more than lime. Or key lime. So I’m doing it up today with this mousse! As it turns out, key lime isn’t just about pie.

This past week has been all about prepping kids for the upcoming AP tests. If you have a teenager in an AP class, you know what I’m talking about. If you don’t, then you clearly don’t care. And that’s fine! I didn’t care either, once upon a time.

When I was in high school, I made a choice to put aside overachievement in favor of socializing. You see, I come from a family of academic, high-achieving people, and they are a pretty intellectual bunch. Growing up, I thought I was stupid because I didn’t fit into that construct. It took years for me to understand that I was smart in a different way.

It’s hard to outgrow your childhood, that’s for sure. We all get slotted into roles fairly early in life: the geek, the emotional one, the sweet one. Do we ever stop being those people, deep down? I doubt it.

These roles are often assigned accidentally, but that almost makes it worse. Two kids can’t be the smartest, after all. So one of them inevitably becomes the one who is good with people, or the one who plays a better game of basketball. And unless you’re a very determined or confident person, there you stay, in that role.

I don’t have any answers. As hard as I try not to fit my own kids into roles, I can’t stop certain natural processes. I can only control what I do with dessert. You see, key lime is accustomed to being put into pie. That is key lime’s designated function. And I’ve turned it into mousse!

In case you didn’t hear about my raw egg aversion in this cappuccino mousse post, I make it a point not to make my mousse with egg. Instead, I whip heavy cream into stiff peaks, fold in my flavors, and call it a day. You could use Cool Whip, but the heavy cream tastes a little better. Or a lot, depending on your taste discernment.

This Cinco de Mayo, change up the book a little bit. Don’t be afraid to try a dessert you’ve only known in another role. And don’t be averse to embracing an identity you didn’t grow up with. We can’t stay the people we were as children, for better or worse. So let’s embrace the people we’ve become!

Or bless the day? I’m not really sure. All I know is that I have become totally okay with adding crust to my fudge, and now life will never be the same. And this key lime pie fudge is off the chain!

I’m going to mix business with pleasure here for a minute and rant about standardized testing. May I? Please?

Without getting into specifics right now because I’m a teacher and I value my job, I wish to all the powers above that our nation’s politicians would just back the heck off when it comes to testing kids. It does nobody any favors. Not the kids who are being given terrible tests created by businesses and not teachers, not the teachers who have to cut down on instructional time to administer the tests, and not the parents who don’t get a full picture of what their kids are in for.

The problem is, people don’t trust teachers, even highly qualified ones. It’s part of a cultural attitude toward a female-dominated profession, and I don’t know how to undo any of it. All I know is that unless people give teachers a little more credit for knowing what we’re doing, these tests will continue and children will cease to know what it means to think critically.

I have so much more to say, but that’s the tip of the iceberg, baby. And instead of going farther right now, I’ll just say that one of the things I love most about teaching is creativity. And that’s what I love most about baking, too.

What is more fun than creating new desserts? This key lime pie fudge became part of my consciousness in the middle of a solitary stroll, and now that I’ve made and eaten it (way too much of it, honestly), I can tell you that it’s an experience you need to have.

This fudge has the exact same flavor as key lime pie, but from there the experience differs. While you can probably eat a couple of slices of key lime pie without feeling an unbearable sugar rush, this fudge packs a powerful punch. A little goes a long way, which is why I immediately put half on a plate and gave it away. The other half is all mine to eat my way through slowly!

Yes, I’m greedy. But those flecks of lime zest in the fudge are irresistible. And the whole dessert lends a bright spot to an otherwise dreary time in my work life, when I have to stop teaching and proctor tests. I love teaching. It’s the best. So why does standardized testing keep ruining it?

At least I can control this fudge and keep my dessert experience pure. I recommend you do the same!

I’m all about lime, all year long. But this time of year is special because it’s socially acceptable to like lime in May. In November, not so much. That doesn’t stop me from squirting lime juice onto everything all the time, from salads to fish to salsa. Mmm.

Key lime is even more fun. Those little limes are so cute! They come in a bag and they just look so happy that someone is loving them and using them in dessert. And boy, are they right. I don’t know what I’d do without those little suckers.

With them, the possibilities are endless. And as much as I love key lime pie, I love the bars even more. They’re essentially the same thing, but I’m big into bars because it’s totally okay to eat several in one sitting. There’s this odd thing in our culture where one slice of pie is supposedly enough. As if! But it’s cool to eat lots and lots of bars. So you can bet I’m making all of this joy in an 8 x 8 pan. Aw yeah.

As usual, I like to kick my graham cracker crust up a notch by adding melted chocolate (white chocolate, in this case). It really adds some wonderful sweetness to the bar’s base, making the sharp tang of the lime even more distinct. If you’re into varying flavors in your dessert (salted caramel, anyone?), always melt some chocolate into your crust. And instead of using white sugar, use brown. It caramelizes the crust and makes it completely irresistible.

If you like your bars to be super tangy, just add more zest to taste. But don’t go overboard, because everyone has a limit. You want a good zing, but that’s about it.

This recipe is ridiculously simple. And it’s totally worth it. Eat up!

Crust:

• 1/3 cup unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 cup graham cracker crumbs

Filling:

• 1-2 tablespoons key lime zest
• 1/2 cup key lime juice (you can use bottled)
• 2 egg yolks
• 14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk (I used fat-free)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Coat an 8 x 8 pan with cooking spray and set aside.

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt the butter and white chocolate. Stir until smooth. Mix in the graham cracker crumbs and brown sugar until the crumbs are moist. Press the crumb mixture into the bottom and up the sides of the prepared pan, being sure that you pack the crust tightly with your fingers.

Bake for 5-10 minutes until set.

While the crust is baking, prepare the filling. Combine the zest, key lime juice, and egg yolks. Stir in the condensed milk and mix until thoroughly combined. Pour the filling into the crust and bake for 20-25 minutes until set.

Allow the bars to cool completely. Refrigerate for at least two hours (overnight is better). When you’re ready to serve, cut into squares!

I still remember my first slice of key lime pie. It was quite a special moment. My husband and I were dating and we went on vacation to Florida, and in a restaurant overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, I had my first slice. I think that moment was perfection. And I’ve been trying to recreate it ever since. This particular tart, though not a key lime pie, manages to bring back that happy feeling effortlessly.

Initially, I meant for this to be purely a lemon tart. But then (yay for happy accidents!) I ran out of lemons, so I improvised by combining lemon and key lime juice. It worked out beautifully, adding even more dimension to the tart citrusy flavor. And talk about summery! I decided to add the word “sunshine” to the tart’s name because it really is like a burst of warm, breezy air after a long, dark winter.

Before I start complaining about the weather again, let’s focus on this tart. The graham cracker crust is made with brown sugar and melted white chocolate. I happened to have some white chocolate chips hanging out on my counter, so I took about half a cup, melted them along with the butter for the crust, and the result was a solid and much more addictive base for the tart filling.

If I’d been really fancy, I probably would’ve zested key limes along with the lemon for the filling. But since the key lime was kind of not on purpose, the lemon worked fine. It added all the necessary tartness and brightened up the color. Yellow is my favorite color. Reminds me of everything happy! As does my microplane zester. I could go on about my zester all day, but I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say that it’s one of my favorite kitchen tools, ever.

If you’d like to make this as a pie, go for it. I just wanted to feel a bit fancier, and the tart pans that have removable bottoms are so easy to work with. If you don’t have one, it’s a great investment.

I’m going to go grab a frosted margarita right now along with a slice of this and pretend I’m back in Florida again. A gal can dream!

Crust:

• 1/3 cup unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup white chocolate chips
• 1/3 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup graham cracker crumbs

Filling:

• 1 tablespoon lemon zest
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup key lime juice
• 2 egg yolks
• 1 can sweetened condensed milk (14 oz.)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Coat a tart pan with cooking spray and set aside.

In a microwave-safe bowl, melt the butter and white chocolate. Stir until smooth. Mix in the graham cracker crumbs and brown sugar until the crumbs are moist. Press the crumb mixture into the bottom and up the sides of the prepared tart pan, being sure that you pack the crust tightly with your fingers.

Bake the crust for 5-10 minutes until set.

While the crust is baking, prepare the filling. Combine the zest, lemon juice, key lime juice, and egg yolks. Stir in the condensed milk and mix until thoroughly combined. Pour the filling into the crust and bake for 15-20 minutes until set.

Allow the tart to cool completely. Refrigerate overnight. When you’re ready to serve, slice into wedges!

And since it’s my week to bake green stuff (yay, St. Paddy’s Day!), I figured it sorta kinda works. Lime zest is very green. See?

These bars are special. I adapted this recipe from Becky Bakes and it’s one of my favorites. Instead of working like a traditional lemon bar, these have a consistency like a brownie, but with citrus. Super brilliant. All I did was substitute key limes for the lemon, so I can take credit for very little here. And I am forever indebted to Becky’s genius.

Anyway, onward. These bars come out very sticky and delicious, dripping with a tangy and sweet glaze. They’re impossible to resist. When I brought them into work, everyone from sweet fiends to sour lovers ate them up. Usually, someone’s not into it. You know, they don’t like peanut butter, or chocolate is not their thing, or mint is best left for toothpaste and all that.

Not these. Everyone eats them. So be forewarned.

They’re so incredibly ooey gooey. It’s really important not to overbake them. When the edges are brown, they’re done. It’s the same art you use when baking brownies. If they’re just a tad on the sticky side, they’re at their best. Too much baking equals a drier product. No no no.

When you take them out, let them cool for a few minutes before glazing, and don’t move the pan after you glaze the bars. You want the top to be shiny and call to you with all of its seductive tanginess.

So go forth and lime it up! Do it for the summer we know is coming. Hey, a margarita on the side wouldn’t be overkill, would it?

Bar Ingredients:

• 3/4 cup butter, melted and cooled
• 1 and 1/2 cups flour
• 1 and 1/2 cups sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 3 large eggs
• 1 can (14 oz.) condensed milk (I used fat-free)
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 tablespoons key lime juice (freshly squeezed or from the bottle)
• 1 teaspoon key lime zest

Glaze:

• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 3 tablespoons key lime juice
• 1 teaspoon key lime zest

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Prepare a 9 x 13 pan with cooking spray.

Combine the flour, sugar and salt in a separate bowl and combine. Set aside.

Mix the cooled, melted butter with the condensed milk, eggs, vanilla, key lime juice and key lime zest until smooth.

Gradually incorporate the flour mixture into the butter mixture until the batter is fully combined.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 25-30 minutes until the edges are golden.

Take the bars out of the oven and let them cool for a few minutes.

Combine the powdered sugar, key lime juice and key lime zest in a bowl and make sure all the infredients are evenly mixed.  Pour the glaze over the bars, spreading it out gently to cover as much surface area as possible.

Let the bars finish cooling.  Slice and serve!