Lime Mousse Pie with Homemade Blackberry Sauce

I tried out this new recipe (with my own tweaks) for our Fourth of July celebrations, and I am so glad I did! This is a fabulous summer recipe. Firstly, it’s a pie. Hard to go wrong with pie. But the flavor! Sweet and tangy lime mousse, topped with Cool Whip, blackberry sauce, and fresh blackberries is such a great combination that just screams SUMMER!! in my mouth. Yum.

What you’ll need:

• A ten inch graham cracker crust (I used a nine inch, and had a huge amount of filling left over, but if you only get a hold of a nine inch, just eat the extra filling. Om. Nom.)

For the mousse:

• 1 14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk
• 1 tbl lime zest
• 2/3 cup fresh lime juice (about 7-8 average sized limes)
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 2 drops green food coloring (optional – I did not add this in)
• 2 1/2 cups Cool Whip

For the blackberry sauce:

• 2 cups fresh or frozen blackberries (I used a combo of both)
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 lime juice (I did not use fresh for this but the bottled kind instead)
• 2 tsp cornstarch

Normally, I would homemake my graham cracker crust, but since I had a lot of food to prep for the weekend’s festivities, I went the easy way and bought mine. Feel free to make your own.

To make the mousse:

Start by zesting your limes (two limes gave me more than one tablespoon of zest, but I don’t think only one lime would have been enough) and then juice your limes as well. This is the longest, and most tedious part of the process. I actually don’t mind putting in the effort to squeeze out the juice – it gives it such great flavor compared to bottled!

In a medium bowl, mix together the condensed milk, lime zest, lime juice, and granulated sugar. If you are adding in food coloring, add it in now too. (Quick tangent: I actually added in blue food coloring to mine in an attempt to make it red, white, and blue for the fourth. Yay festive, right? Wrong.  I added in EIGHT drops and still ended up with a very greenish teal pie, haha! So I really don’t think you need the added green food coloring – the lime juice makes it nice and light green all on it’s own.)

Once thoroughly combined, cover and chill in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Next fold in your Cool Whip. Now if you aren’t a Cool Whip fan, feel free to make your own with whipping cream – again, I was just going the easy route here.

Once folded together, gently spoon into the pie crust and chill for at least six hours, though I recommend at least twelve.

To make the blackberry sauce:

*Note – this makes a HUGE amount of this sauce. I still have half a mason jar of it in my fridge! I would say you could easily halve this recipe and have enough for the pie and more.*

In a medium saucepan combine the blackberries, sugar, lime juice, and cornstarch. Cook and stir over medium heat until bubbly. Cook and stir for two minutes more or until it has thickened a bit.

Press through a fine mesh sieve into a mason jar and discard solids. Cover and chill until serving time!

 

When the pie is ready, serve each slice with a dollop of Cool Whip, drizzle on some blackberry sauce, and top with fresh blackberries. Devour.

 

Valentine’s Day

Happy Valentine’s Day! The hubs and I have never done anything over the top for this particular holiday. Neither one of us are against it at all, it’s just not one of those holidays that is really important to either one of us. We have the tendency to randomly surprise each other with little things for no reason at all (he usually snags me nerdy collectibles, I tend to bring home some of his favorite sweet treats!) so V-Day just isn’t too big on our celebration list. But this year, I was spoiled!

We celebrated on Wednesday since he had the day off, and first he surprised me with this beautiful orchid.

Orchids are my absolute favorite flower, in basically any variety and this one is so lovely. Giant blooms, with plenty of buds left to open up!

Then he got me a HUGE square of fudge from my favorite shop! YUM! I rarely ever get fudge, so I’m pretty excited to savor this baby. Despite the fact that all I want to do is take it to a corner and gnaw away the entire thing, mouse style. But a little at a time. . .self control. . .I can do that!

And lastly, as if that wasn’t enough he got me a new Game of Thrones Funko figurine! I LOVE my Funko guys – I think they are such an awesome combination of totally adorable and totally creepy. He got me Jaime Lannister for Christmas, and now he’s added Jon Snow to my collection!

ISN’T HE JUST SO ADORABLE?!?! He is definitely my favorite one yet. His little mustache just kills me.

The little miss and I made him some cards earlier in the week. For hers, she painted a separate sheet of paper and then I cut out heart shapes. She glued them on in a line on the front of his card and then ‘wrote’ (aka she held the Sharpie while I guided her hand) on the front. For the inside she opted to do a watercolor drawing on one side, and crayons on the other. She was so proud! For her envelope, she colored a white heart and glued it on. Mine was just some stamp letters and silver ink! I think this years card is my favorite card I’ve made him yet. It’s silly, which suits us (definitely not the romantic sappy type over here) and also adorable! For the inside I used a sticker from my Scrawny Girl sticker pack and wrote a little love note for him. Perfect!

How do you plan to spend your Valentine’s Day?

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Christmas Wrap-up & Handmade Gifts

Did you know there is a difference between handmade and homemade? I learned a couple years back that handmade refers to items or things while homemade refers specifically to foods. Fun fact of the day!

I hope everyone’s holiday was excellent – ours was as usual. Busy, but wonderful. I love to have a couple days completely filled with family, friends, and food!

Every year, I always try and make presents for people. I grew up hand making presents for people as long as I can remember. My mum and grandparents still have paper ornaments I made when I was three. I still remember making cinnamon dough ornaments with my mum to give as gifts. It’s something that has always been extremely important to me, and therefore it’s something I want to pass along to my daughter. Since she was a year old she has been making presents for people and I hope she grows up enjoying it!

For her gifts this year, we did a combination of photo gifts, and ornaments. My family loves photos, so these are always a winner.

These were incredibly simple to make. We sat down with watercolors and salt to make the backgrounds. Then she looked through photos of her and Daddy and picked her favorite, and of her and Mimi and picked her favorite. For Mimi’s gift I did a little ‘interview’ with her about her Mimi (what Mimi likes to do, her favorite thing to do at Mimi’s house, etc) and wrote it up under the photo. Then I snagged two shadowbox frames from Target, assembled them together, and voila! Perfect gifts from a toddler.

For the ornaments I made a cinnamon dough, and we rolled and cut out shapes together with cookie cutters. Then I used got out some ABC stamps and she helped me stamp the letters on. Once they were all dry (a few days later), she painted them (I did the letter outline in white of course). The little ones were strung up as garland for our living room, and the big ones will be gifts. As you can see, I didn’t turn the snowman quite enough as he was drying so he got a bit curled. Adds character right? Right.

As for my handmade gifts, I did some drawings and paintings for friends.

  

And also some Doctor Who bookmarks! I definitely made one for myself as well – who wouldn’t crack up seeing that face sticking out of your book?! On the backs of each bookmark are the words ‘Property of (insert recipients name) written out in Gallifreyan (aka the Doctor’s language for those non-Whovians out there). I found this awesome Gallifreyan translator on DeviantArt; it’s pretty fabulous.

And being somewhat of a crazy cat lady, I made a couple new toys for our two kitties. Again, very simple. I cut out two pieces of felt and sewed a button and a bit of detailing on, then stitched around the edge, stuffed ’em full of catnip and sewed the rest shut! Pardon the wobbly stitching – I don’t hand stitch things often. One of my kitties could care less about them, but our other one is OBSESSED with them! He wrestles, chews, throws, and generally tries to destroy them to get at the catnip. It’s hilarious.

I WANTS IT!!!

As for my homemade gifts (aka yummy treats) tune in for my Holiday December Baking post on Monday!

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Homemade Paints

Since my daughter was running down to the last scrapes of paint in her jars, I decided to give some homemade paints a go. The recipe I used is this:

via Easie Peasie

It worked brilliantly!

I did exactly what the instructions said and dumped everything in the pan (I had my heat on medium/low which is 4-5 on my stove) and although the instructions didn’t say to, I did stir the whole time it was on the heat as I was afraid the cornstarch would settle and clump. So I’m stirring and stirring for probably 6 or 8 minutes, thinking Hmmmm, this really isn’t thickening at all. Then out of nowhere, this happened:

Ah, the magic of science! This was the coolest transition ever since it went from a white liquid to this awesome translucent gel in a matter of seconds. I was still stirring for all of this FYI.

So once it was all thickened, I gathered these supplies for the coloring process:

I just added in the new paint to the old paint jars, and the little container and spoon were for mixing each color (cleaning in between each color is super easy – just rinse with hot water and it melts away).

After mixing up all the colors and loading them into the jars it was time to paint of course!

  

She loved them! In all honesty they don’t make the best brush paints (they are labeled as finger paints after all) simply because when they are spread too thin they tend to turn clear. But my miss still loved them, and it cost me all of about 50 cents (if that) to make. Much better than driving to the store and paying $10 for a new set of Crayola paints if you ask me! And although this wasn’t a great activity for a two and a half year old to help make (let’s see, hot burner and food coloring – ugh) she did great! She understood she couldn’t touch but she did enjoy passing me the paint bottles to fill and picking which color of paint to make next. Bonus: It further reinforced her learning of color mixing!

While we’re on the subject of kid art, I was curious what you all use for your kids to paint on? I tend to use cardboard recycling as it’s something we always have around the house, and it’s free. Plus, the cardboard is thick enough that it doesn’t bend too much if my little one piles on the paint. And did I mention it’s FREE? The white pieces in the above images are actually inserts in between the cans of catfood we buy!

Cereal boxes (and snack boxes) never make it to recycling – I always cut them up for her to paint on! Do any of you have free around the house art supplies you like to use?

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