While prepping one of our most popular desserts — the now iconic Spruce Tip Key Lime Pie — I finally exhausted our coveted stockpile of frozen spruce tips from the previous year. But I was prepared. A freshly frozen batch from this year’s picking was already comfortably chilling in our freezer.
Another year has gone by. I sort of knew that already, I guess. But somehow the spruce tips made it official.
Ashley had just stopped by with a fresh haul, so it was not a depleted stockpile that worried me.
“I taste every tree I pick,” she said. “Sure, I have my favourite trees, but you still want to taste them.”
“You don’t know what kind of year the tree had,” she added. “Maybe it had been stressed by nearby road construction; maybe a storm had affected its mood.”
Ain’t that the truth, I thought. It was also true for me after all.
I guess that means the pie will also be different this year, while being the same. It will taste of this winter’s particularly heavy rains (with herbaceous undertones), of its fierce winter storms (with electric zing), and also of its shimmering sunny days (with unmistakable citrus tang).
There is something seemingly Romantic about eating a tree and it becoming part of you. So may this pie tell the story of this enchanted land and its surrounding waters.
It is a sweet, yet simple reminder of our place within it.
For the filling
- 1 oz fresh or frozen spruce tips
- 500 g heavy cream
- 5 sheets gelatin (Isabelle Creek)
- 60 g sugar
- 145 g lime juice
- 1 lime (zest)
- 1 can condensed milk
For the crust
- 50 g butter
- 150 g Graham cracker crumbs
- 125 g almond meal (or almond flour, but almond meal works best)
Directions
- First, bake the crust. Preheat the oven to 350℉, then melt the butter and mix with the graham crumbs and almond meal.
- Press the mixture into a 9- or 10-inch pie dish, then bake for 12 to 15 minutes, or until lightly browned. Cool the crust while you prepare the filling.
- Soak the gelatin sheets in cold water.
- Warm half of the cream and the condensed milk in a saucepan. It should be warm to the touch, but be careful: it will burn if not stirred, even at low temperatures.
- Take the cream mixture off heat, add the gelatin (squeeze it well beforehand), and stir for a minute.
- Add the rest of the cream and the sugar. Stir well and allow to cool.
- In a Vitamix or blender, blend the spruce tips with the cream and condensed-milk mixture, then strain it into a container (do this in multiple batches if you have a small blender to avoid stressing the motor).
- Add the lime juice and zest (the mixture will start thickening).
- Pour onto your crust, and away it goes into the fridge for at least 4 hours or, even better, overnight.