This weekend, I thought about making a pie, specifically a lemon pie, but if there is one thing I know about myself, I really suck at making pie crusts.
So I started thinking about alternatives to pie, and I really wanted something cool and tart.
I also REALLY did not want to have to make a traditional pie crust.
Hence, Lemon Ice Box Pie Dessert.
Traditional Ice Box Pie has a graham cracker crust (at least from what I googled). I had not a graham cracker in the house.
I did, however, have pecans!
Eureka!
Back in the day, when she actually used to cook more than what she could open up from a box at Sams or Costco, my mother used to make a dessert called Chocolate No Name Dessert. It's cream cheese, chocolate, and whipped cream on a pecan crust.
That was it! I decided to use the pecan crust you bake in the oven from the No Name Dessert, but instead of chocolate, I'd use lemons.
Yum!
So, you start with half a stick of melted butter.
Half a cup of chopped pecans. 1 and 1/4 cup of all purpose flour.
Mix all the ingredients together.
Press down into the bottom of an un-greased pan.
Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes.
It may crack a little, but don't worry, be happy, it all gets covered up in the end.
Now for the lemon part of the dessert.
Whisk together 1 cup of sugar, 4 tablespoons of corn starch, and 1/4 of a teaspoon of salt.
Add in one cup of water and stir well.
Continually stir over medium heat until the mixture becomes thick.
Whisk 4 egg yolks.
Once your water/sugar mixture is thick, you want to slowly temper it into your yolks. Just slowly drip some of the sugar mixture into your egg yolks and whisk really fast so that your eggs do not turn into sweet scrambled eggs. Once that is combined, pour the rest of your tempered eggs into the water/sugar mixture, stir really well, and wham, bam, thank you ma'am you have a custard!
Zest a couple of lemons and drop those into your custard.
Next up, add 4 tablespoons of butter. Whisk until it's all combined.
Add the juice of two lemons, and continue to whisk.
You will end up with a nice, thick, lemony custard.
I could eat just that by itself.
In a mixing bowl, take two 8 oz boxes of cream cheese (softened), 1/2 a cup of sugar, and the zest of another lemon.
Mix until it's all creamed together.
Add your custard, mix well.
Pour the cream cheese/custard over the top of your pecan crust.
You can do a couple of things here.
You can place this in the freezer, and end up with a really tart dessert that's still really good.... or.....
You can take some heavy whipping cream and slather the top of it.
Actually, I did that at first, but decided that it would be better to mix the custard in with the whipped cream. I don't have a picture of that step unfortunately. It was sort of done on the fly.
My bad.
This is what you get only after about an hour in the freezer.
Not done, but we are an impatient family, so there ya go.
However, if you are a good girl or boy, you will leave it alone for about 4 hours and once you pull it out, you will get lemony perfection!
Lemon Ice Box Dessert!
Enjoy!
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