Lemons & Limes

Cloyed by chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies? Bellied up with jelly beans? Peeps got your teeth stuck grittily together?

Now is the time to refresh your taste buds! To clean your palate with a bracing lemon or lime dessert. Of course, they have sugar in them! But: the tingle of the citrus fruit makes you at least think you're eating something ... vaguely ... healthy.

Years ago -- 1988 as nearly as I can discover -- when John Berendt's "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" had just become a runaway best-seller, we went to Savannah to see book sites for ourselves. The squares, surrounded by stately old houses, were beautiful. Down by the river was not so, uh, pristine. We had lunch a the Dockside Restaurant (201 W. River 912/236-9253 est. 1988) and they served an incredibly good Key Lime Pie. I remarked upon it to our server and she promptly brought me the recipe! They'd had so many requests, they'd printed up a flyer with it.

KEY LIME PIE
1 store-bought Graham cracker crust
4 egg yolks
1/2 cup (4 oz.) bottled lime juice
1 14-oz. can of sweetened condensed milk

Unwrap the pie crust and put in the oven for 10 min. at 325 degrees
Mix the egg yolks, lime juice and milk together.
Pour this mixture into the pie shell and bake about 15 minutes at 325.

Once upon a time, Lemon Squares were The Dessert. Easy and quick to make, a lot of hostesses fell back on our friend, the lemon. This recipe is from a book called "I'd Rather Play Tennis Than Cook" (so you know it's easy!)

LEMON SQUARES
Crust
2 cups flour
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1 cup butter

Pre-heat oven to 350
Combine the flour and powdered sugar
Cut in the butter until the mixture is crumbly
Pat mixture evenly into a 10 x 15 pan and bake 20 minutes

Topping
6 T flour
2 cups sugar
4 eggs
1/2 cup bottled lemon juice
grated lemon rind and powdered sugar to garnish

Combine these ingredients, pour over the partly-baked crust and bake another 25 minutes.