>> Hilah: What’s up dudes!
I am Hilah and welcome to Hilah Cooking.
Today I am going to show ya’ll how to make a traditional Key lime pie.
It’s super simple.
It’s a cinch to make.
It’s really great for these hot summer days because you serve it really nice and cold,
and you don’t have to bake it forever in your oven, so you don’t heat up your damn
house, so let’s get started.
[MUSIC]
[Key Lime Pie Recipe]
>> Hilah: First thing we need to do is make the crust, so I’ve got some melted butter
here and some graham cracker crumbs, and I blended these up in a food processer.
If you have not food process, you could use a blender and just do it in batches, or you
could put them in like a ziplock bag, and beat it with a big stick, or a club or something,
and I am going to add some sugar, and then I’m going to add a little bit of vanilla
too.
Just get this all mixed up.
Ok, so once it’s really evenly combined we’ll dump it into our pie pan, and just
kind of start patting it around and spreading it out starting from the middle and just work
your way out to the edges.
If I had another one that was the same size, I could just kind of like put it in there
and mash it down, get a little short pan, but I only have the one, so I’ll have to
do it the old-timey way, back when people only had one pie pan.
It can be a little tricky to get it even, but do your best and I promise your best will
be good enough.
Ok, and then for the edges just kind of use your fingers and skin to try to make the top
level.
Ok, once you’ve got it all evenly done, I’m just going to put it in the oven at
350 for about 12 minutes to get it nice and hardened up.
Hah!
While the crust is baking we can go ahead and start on our filling.
I am going to add.
I’ve got some key limes here and I’m just going to get about two teaspoons of zest,
and always remember if you have a recipe that calls for zest and juice, zest your fruits
first because it’s almost impossible to do it once they’re juiced, and just make
sure not to get any of the white part, the zest means only the colored part which is
green in this case.
You can set that aside, and we’ll go ahead and start juicing all these, and if you wanted
to just buy bottled key lime juice, you can find that.
You miss out on the zest, so you miss a little bit of the fruitiness that comes with that,
but you can totally do that if you’d rather not, you know, if you’d rather save the
time, and you know, whatever.
Ok, do whatever you want.
I don’t care.
Ok, we’ll start squeezing some limes.
I’ve heard that it’s actually really hard to get real key limes, that a lot of stuff
that’s sold as a Key lime is actually a Persian lime because Florida got hit by some
big hurricanes I guess a century ago or something, and actually killed most of the key lime trees,
so I don’t know if that’s true.
I’ve never been to a key lime orchard or anything, but maybe some of ya’ll know the
truth.
Once you have a hefty pile of lime carcasses and you are well splattered with their juices,
you probably have enough lime juice, so we’ll set this all aside and work on separating
the eggs.
We just want to use the yolks, jiggle it, juggle it, toss it back and forth.
Ok, and save the egg whites for an omelette or making chile rellenos, or feed it to your
dog, Webs!
So, here is the deal.
Real Key lime pie actually calls for sweetened, condensed milk which is exactly what it sounds,
it’s milk that’s been cooked down to remove a lot of the water, and then they add a whole
bunch of sugar, and it was invented as a way to preserve milk when people didn't have refrigeration,
and the Florida Keys used to be kind of a no man’s land I guess, and then didn't have
electricity, and so this pie along with like tres leches cake was also invented for the
same reason was invented to use up the milk that they could get which was canned milk,
so I don’t know, I mean, I was researching this, and I really wanted to like find the
real Key lime pie, the truth behind it, and I was all like, “Oh, man, I bet they used
to use real cream, and like whatever,” all this stuff, but no, they really actually just
used sweetened, condensed milk, so at any rate we are going to mix this up, and then
add the lime juice.
I am going to get this sloppy mess mixed up, and sometimes people add food coloring, but
I am generally kind of anti-food coloring, so I just like it this kind of nice, pale
green, almost yellow color from the eggs, ok, great.
Now once this is all thoroughly mixed we can pour it into the pie shell, and this is still
warm, but that’s ok.
Ok, and I’ve still got my oven on.
I turned it down to 325 when I took the crust out, so I am just going to put this back in
there 10-12 minutes, not very long.
Ok, so I took it out when It’s just got a little jiggle to it, and I’m going to
let it cool here at room temperature for maybe 20 minutes just so I don’t, you know, blast
my fridge with some hot pie, and then I’ll put it in the fridge for at least a couple
of hours, probably like four hours to get it nice and cold, and then I will see you
back then.
About five hours later, the pie’s all cool, and I’ve got a cute slice.
Take a cute bite.
Mmmmmm!
Yummm!
Yum, yum, yum!
Smooth, creamy, cold, delicious, sweet and tart, a little bit, just like a really, strong
nice lime flavor.
This would be a great dessert for like a summer barbeque if you were making like a lot of
spicy or grilled meats and stuff because it kind of cleanses your palate, it’s really
refreshing.
If you want to serve it with some ice cream, or whipped cream, that would be great, but
I don’t really think it needs it honestly.
So, I hope you try this recipe.
If you have any questions, leave them in the comments below, and I’ll get to them as
soon as I can.
Thanks so much for watching, and have a great day.
Bye!
[MUSIC]