Any substitutes for lime oil?
If you want it to be Key Lime pie you need to get Key limes, limes from the Keys. They are different. Otherwise, just call your pie lime pie:.
Buy: 1 ready made pie crust, 1 med size cool whip, 1 can of sweet and condensed milk, 3 limes. Use a juicer to get the lime juice (I just have one that I have to squeeze by hand a cheap one) In a bowl put lime juice, cool whip, and sweet and condensed milk. Mix good till its creamy, put in the pie crust and put in the freezer for at least 3 hours before serving. You can make this a day a head of time.
Key limes are harder to find but are available. They are much smaller than regular limes. Some latino stores will carry the juice in bottles if such a store is available to you. If you can't find them, just use regular limes and a little bit of the zest. If you want really green color (which is not authentic) you will need green food coloring. I don't use it.
A regular lime pie tastes very good, and I bet every key lime pie you've ever tasted didn't use fresh real key limes but some kind of concentrate, so the difference won't matter. Any fresh limes that are hand squeezed end up tasting better than concentrates, just like fresh squeezed orange juice tastes better than homogenized concentrates. And yes, a lime pie will be mostly yellow, since lime juice is not green. It's good to use very finely grated lime peel, a tightly packed full tablespoon per pie, because the lime oils contain a huge amount of fresh lime flavor. You can garnish the top with lime peel strips that have been candied, or paper thin lime slices that have been dipped in granulated sugar, using decorative pattern for each slice you cut. The pie looks rather plain without garnishment, and the extra bit of lime on top is what can serve to show that it's a lime pie without green food coloring. Be sure to lightly toast the graham cracker crust (made unsalted real butter and sugar) so that it's nicely aromatic, then let it cool before filliing. You have to watch the crust closely when toasting because it can go from lightly toasted to browned and burned very quickly, and it continues to cook for a while when pulled from the oven. Better to remove early when it smells nicely toasted before it get's ruined. By the way, you can often find sweetened condensed milk much cheaper with a spanish label like Leche brand, by Nestle, if the grocery store has an international or mexican foods section. It's usually made in the same factory - just the label is different, if you check the address of the packing plant.
