You put de lime in de coconut

My, but I'm a good cook. I don't like to brag, but I made something good today.

Tonight we had leftovers for dinner (my sweetie's been cooking a lot, too, which is super), and I devoted my energies to dessert. We'd had Key Lime pie in Florida and I had been wanting to experiment. I thought: what about using coconut milk? I went hunting for recipes but wasn't finding what I wanted. So I figured I'd build the pie I wanted. Then I stumbled into a recipe that I adapted to get coconut into the crust and was ready to go.

Coconut-Lime Pie

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Lightly butter a 9" pie plate.

Separate 5 eggs, putting the five yolks in a small bowl and three of the egg whites in a medium-sized bowl (save the remaining egg whites if you will use them for something else; they'll keep for up to a week in the fridge).

For the coconut meringue crust:
3 egg whites
1 tablespoon sugar
8 cookies (ginger snaps, graham crackers, animal crackers, gluten-free if desired)
1/4 cup toasted almonds
3 tablespoons softened or melted butter
1/4 cup toasted shredded coconut (sweetened or unsweetened)

Beat the 3 egg whites with the sugar until the meringue forms soft peaks when you stop the beaters and lift them out of the bowl.

Process or blend the cookies, almonds, butter, and toasted coconut until the crumbs resemble coarse sand. Fold this mixture into the meringue. Spread the folded meringue mixture quickly and gently into the pie plate and up the sides. Bake for 20 minutes, or until the meringue crust is just starting to turn golden.

While baking the crust, prepare the filling:

Beat together or blend in a blender:
1/2 of a 14-oz. can sweetened, condensed milk
1/2 of a 14-oz. can coconut milk (Note: NOT sweetened cream of coconut)
5 egg yolks
1 tsp. vanilla
1/4 tsp. salt
1/3 cup lime juice
finely grated zest of 1 lime

Pour the filling into the hot meringue shell and bake the pie at 350 for about 25 minutes or until tiny bubbles pop on the surface.

Cool long enough for the pie to set (2 hours is best) if you can stand to wait that long before you eat it. (I couldn't. And then I tried some later, after it had set. It was even better.)

By the way, I froze everything I did not use except the egg whites. I froze the 1/2 can each of coconut milk and the sweetened, condensed milk; and I poured the remaining lime juice into an ice-cube tray to freeze for future uses. What if I put all of those things in the food processor with some avocado and some agave syrup? Hmmmm. Sounds like a good ice cream recipe, no?