Rosie Makes Lime Custard With A Blueberry Sauce In A Graham Cracker Crust.

It was Saturday morning. A bright and sunny one at that. It was one of those rare days when Rosie was alone for the whole day. Mr. Hawthorne was at work. Daughter Hawthorne was at work. Middle Hawthorne was out of town. Youngest Hawthorne was out and about. I was very excited. How shall Rosie amuse herself today? What will Rosie do all day long? If you guessed "cook" you would be correct. I'd bought blueberries and cherries on sale at the Teeter and I wanted to take a leisurely day to prepare some sweet thangs with these lovely treasures. I shall start with a lime custard encased by a graham cracker crust and topped with a light blueberry sauce. My next post will be about a cherry/almond clafoutis so stay tuned. You won't want to miss that either.

Pretty, isn't it?

Feast your eyes.

Humor me.

Please?

The only way this could possibly be better is to pair it hot with homemade vanilla ice cream.

Rosie's Lime Custard With Blueberries In A Graham Cracker Crust Rosie's Recipe Crust 6 graham crackers 1/4 cup brown sugar, packed 1/2 stick butter, melted Mix crust ingredients and press evenly in bottom and sides of a 7-inch spring form pan. Filling Heat oven to 350 degrees. 4 large eggs halfway between 3/4 cup and 1 cup heavy cream 3/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup lime juice (2 large limes, in my case) zest of 1 lime Beat eggs. Gradually add cream, beating. Slowly beat in sugar. Add lime juice and zest. Pour into prepared crust. Reduce oven temperature to 300. Bake 45 - 50 minutes. Tent with foil. Bake another 5-10 minutes. Let cool. Pour on topping. Topping 1 pint blueberries juice of one lime zest of one lime 1/2 cup sugar (I actually used Splenda.) Cornstarch slurry (1 TB cornstarch mixed with 1 TB cold water.) Heat blueberries, lime juice, and sugar, smashing blueberries. Bring to boil. Simmer about 5 minutes. Add in cornstarch slurry and zest, stirring until mixture thickens. On to my pictures:

I'm eyeing my 7 inch spring form pan and figuring out how much crust I'm going to need. I settled on 6 graham crackers.

Process the graham crackers into fine crumbs.

Mix cracker crumbs and brown sugar evenly ...

... and pour in melted butter.

Mix well.

Pour into spring form pan.

Using plastic wrap, press out crumb mixture evenly ...

... starting in the center, working towards the outside ...

... pressing up the sides. By the way, this is an excellent crust. It's great for cheesecakes. Just double the measurements for a larger spring form pan. On to the custard.

My ingredients: 4 large eggs halfway between 3/4 and 1 cup of heavy cream 3/4 cup sugar 1/2 cup lime juice (which turned out to be 2 limes) zest of 1 lime

Crack the eggs into your bowl.

You know how I love my action shots.

Beat eggs until light and lemon colored.

Gradually beat in sugar.

Beat in cream.

Then lime juice.

And zest.

Pour into prepared pan.

Always a good idea to put a spring form pan on another pan in case you have leaks.

After the first 45- 50 minutes, I checked my custard. It was browning a bit on top, but still too jiggly. So I "tented" the custard with foil and let it cook for another 10 minutes. Notice, the operative word here is "tent." As in don't let the foil touch the surface. As in actually "tent" the foil. My bad.

I tried to fix the peeled off pieces but it doesn't really matter since I'm going to cover this with a blueberry topping.

Let cool. Notice the shrinkage. And depression. This is where the blueberry sauce is going.

Blueberry topping ingredients: 1 pint blueberries 1/2 cup sugar For some reason, I used Splenda, instead of sugar. If you need to cut out the sugar somewhere, I would recommend doing it in the sauce, not in the custard. That Splenda has a really weird texture and I don't know what it would do to the lovely texture of custard.

Sprinkle sugar/Splenda over blueberries.

I told you it has a weird texture. It's something between snow and styrofoam leaning more towards styrofoam.

Add in the juice of one lime.

Start smashing and bring to a boil. Simmer for 5 minutes.

Add in cornstarch slurry.

Zest joins the party. Cook until thickened.

I love the sparkly.

My custard has cooled off, I've removed the pan, and I'm ready to spoon on the blueberry topping. Notice as the custard cooled, it formed a depression for the blueberries.

Enjoy the spooning.

Action shots of blueberries dropped from above.

Blueberries from the sky. (Ten points for the Sandra Lee reference.)

Do I need to describe it?

Buttery, sweet graham cracker crust. Creamy, rich custard with a lime accent. Syrupy topping. Bursting blueberries.

All the textures toyed with my tongue. The flavors tickled my palate.

The Hawthornelets went through this like Pauler Dean goes through buttah ... like Rachael Ray goes through EVOO ... like Sandra Lee goes through aigstraxts, Cool Whip, and vodka ... like Ina goes through the good vanilla ... like Bobby goes through chipotles ... like Mario goes through orange clogs ... like Guy Fee-ye-tee goes through douche bags ... like Giada goes through low-cut tops. I could go on, but won't. You are welcome.