Keylime Bars

This weekend, K2 is having her annual pre-holiday shopping extravaganza home show, and today I'm making some keylime bars to take and share with shoppers tomorrow.  A friend on Facebook asked for the recipe and I figured I could share it here and help spread the keylimey love.

The players:

For the crust you will need:
2 Cups flour
1 Cup (2 sticks) butter
1/2 Cup powdered sugar
Pinch of salt (optional)
Dash of cinnamon (optional)

For the filling you will need:
4 eggs
5 Tablespoons keylime juice
4 Tablespoons flour
2 Cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt

Aaaaand...action!

Heat your oven to 325 F.  I don't know what that is in C.  You can find a conversion calculator on the Internetz if you need it.  You can find darned near anything on the Internetz whether you need it or not.

Mix the dry ingredients for the crust well.  

Melt the butter over low heat.  Wow, that's a lot of butter.  This has to be good!

Carefully pour the butter over the dry ingredients and not all over the counter while you're trying to photograph the action for your blog.  Ahem.

Mixa, mixa, mixa with a fork.  Don't get too crazy here or you'll wind up with a tough crusty part, and tough crusty parts are a bummer, man.

Once it's mixed and still nice and crumbly, dump it into a 9 x 13 pan.  Or a 13 x 9 pan.  Your choice.  Sometimes I'm a rebel and use an 8 x 11 pan so I have a thicker crust and deeper bars.  I'm crazy that way.

You do NOT need to grease the pan.  Did you notice how much butter went into this crust?  Pat it down gently until it feels pretty even.  Or you could make it all bumpy and wavy and have kind of uneven bars if you want.  Who am I to judge?

Bake at 325 F for 20 minutes.  

Remove from the oven but leave that thing cranked to 325.  Look at that crust.  Mmm...

While the crust cools a wee, let's move on to the filling.  You can wait for the crust to cool entirely if you like.  Heck, you can just make the filling while the crust bakes and pour it right on as soon as the crust has cooked.  I'm just telling you how I do it.  Anyway, the filling...

Beat the eggs fluffy.

Next, add the sugar, still beating.  Pretend the mixer is all shiny and new and not distressingly worn and weird looking.  Thanks.

Once the sugar is well beaten in, add the salt.  I used Celtic sea salt because I like it, but regular table salt is fine.

Next comes the flour, one Tablespoon at a time.

Finally, the lime juice, one Tablespoon at a time.  Let it whisk around for a bit to get nice and creamy and smooth and tantalizing.

Pour over the crust, triumphant when you didn't spill it on the stove top while you simultaneously dumped and photographed.  Hurrah!

Oooh, purty...

Bake at 325 F for 25 minutes.  It should be well set, so if it still jiggles, leave it in for a few more minutes.

Oh, bubbly wonder!

Let the whole thing cool completely.  Once cooled, you can dust it with powdered sugar or just grab a fork and dive in.  Like I said, I won't judge!