Key Lime Pie Bars

Hola, mis compadres! It's been a loooooooooooong time, I know. Let's just put the hiatus behind us and never speak of it again. Instead, let's talk about delicious things, like key lime pie bars :) Yummmm.

Awhile ago I was at the grocery story and needed one lime, but all they had were bags of limes. So I thought to myself, when life gives you limes, make dessert.  I also happened to have graham crackers and some cream cheese, and thus was born the idea of a key lime style cheesecake bar. 

Key lime pie is a ridiculously simple dessert that is basically sweetened condensed milk, lime juice, and a binder.  I usually add sour cream to my key lime pies, but because I was making bars instead of a pie, I used cream cheese instead to add a slightly fluffier, more cheesecake-like texture.

Peach and Raspberry Pie

One of the great paradoxes of life is the desire to make fresh fruit pies in the middle of summer.  Berries and stone fruit are in season, so summer is the perfect time to make a pie. But the oppressive heat makes you want to do anything BUT turn on your oven. When faced with the choice of to pie or not to pie, I always choose pie. If only Hamlet had had this kind of clarity.

I'm not actually a huge peach pie fan. When a pie is made with just peaches, I find the flavor to be one-dimensional and sometimes cloyingly sweet. At the other end of the spectrum, raspberries pies are notoriously tart, even for a raspberry fiend like myself.  But when you marry the two together, ahhhhhh.....perfect harmony. The raspberries add some tartness and variety to the pie, and the peaches, when balanced with something else, seem delightfully sweet and summery.

Pies fillings are very straightforward things to make, so to challenge myself, I decided to make my crust from scratch.