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Layered Lime Mousse Pie with Pecan Crunch

May 4, 2023
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Most of my friends and all of my family know that I was raised in a house without sugar. (Today this wouldn’t be a weird thing. But in the 70’s, it was weird and my mom was way ahead of her time.) No treats, no cakes, no normal sugary or overyly processed cereals or snacks etc etc etc. It was pretty extreme, and it was not fun. This is probably what has driven my sweet tooth over the years, because sugar was this glorious and amazing thing that my sister and I would have only on very rare occasions.

The only exception were our Holiday meals. I would look forward to the one and only “Family Recipe” my mom would pull out on Thanksgiving and Christmas, and it was this gloriously fluffy, and sweet concoction, filled with delicious marshmallows and lime Jell-O, cream cheese, pineapple, and pecans. What became known as the “Kreutzjans Family Green Jell-O Salad” is one of the only recipes I have from my mom. She was a decent cook and baker and was a genious with healthy clean eating, but because we didn’t have sugary treats, baking just wasn’t a thing she passed on to me. I’ve later found out her mom, my Grandmother Win, was a baker!

The Green Jell-O salad was so 70’s, set in its classic Tuperware mold, so funny and kitsch, and yet so comforting and delicious to me. I still make it every year, and it’s just not the holidays without it.

Fast forward to me being able to bake and make sweet things on my own when I moved out, and now years later, the more I experiment with my own recipes, I’ve wanted to turn that funny Jell-O salad into a more refined and from-scratch version of itself.

And so the Layered Lime Mousse Pie was born!! All the flavors of that funny Jell-O salad, but with a joyous layer of lime curd, and lime mousse, with the added extra crunch of the graham crust and pecan crumb crunch layer. No longer a funny or outdated Jell-O salad, this layered pie brings those flavors to life in a much more sophisticated way.

To be honest, it’s a little complicated, it has multiple processes, and it’s a little bit time intensive, but it is so worth the effort. You can break up the process in a couple of days so it’s not too long on one baking day, make the crust and crumb one day, make the curd the next, and the day before you serve it make the two mousses and chill over night. On the day you want to serve it, make the whipped cream toppping. OR, just do it all in one day. However you make it, it is so delicious! And no Lime Jell-O was used during the process! Goodbye 70’s Jell-O Salad. Hello, Gorgeous!

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