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It's been called the greatest regional American dessert. Key lime pie is a custard pie from
Florida, it was originally not baked at all, but we're gonna bake this one. It's my wife's
favorite dessert and she asked me to make her one, so we're making it.
I'm on team graham cracker crust, all day long. Some people do make this with pastry
crust, but I've got about 200 grams of graham crackers here, which is the most you'd possibly
need for a 9-inch or 23-centimeter pie pan. And you could just crunch them up with your
hands. That'd take awhile and you'd get a very heterogeneous product, which a lot of
people prefer, and a quicker way to do that is by putting the crackers in a bag and just
beating them with something heavy.
Me, this is a rare occasion where I prefer homogeneity. I'm using the food processor
to get a totally even, sandy crumb. I like how this sets up really solid in the finished
pie. A few pieces inevitably just spin around, because food processors. I dunno, just eat
those, this is not an exact science.
Yes I'm gonna mix this crust right in my pie pan — I see no reason to dirty another vessel.
Butter. I'm using salted, because it's usually what I have in the house, and because I love
salt in a graham cracker crust. So good. If you're using unsalted butter I would suggest
up to a half a teaspoon of salt to match this whole stick, 4 ounces, 114 grams of butter.
Into the microwave to melt on low power. Full power would cause the water inside to explode
and make a mess in there.
While we're waiting, sugar. You could use any form of sugar, but for this I like dark
brown sugar, or some white sugar followed by a healthy glug of molasses because that's
all brown sugar is. I've started with like a third of a cup of sugar. I might add more.
And I absolutely love a little cinnamon in a Key lime pie crust. I've had it this way
in the Florida Keys many times. Oh, for people who don't know, the Keys are a chain of coral
islands off the coast of south Florida. My folks used to live down there.
Anyway, maybe half a teaspoon of cinnamon to start with.
Here's our butter, safely melted. If you wanna keep your pie vegan, use coconut oil. I'm
gonna start with only about 2/3rds of that. Maybe it'll need the rest, maybe it won't.
Absolutely no point in mixing this up with a spoon. You're gonna need your hands eventually
to mold this crust into the pan, so just toss it around, and when it looks like wet sand
like that, you could call it done. That'd get you a very crumbly crust, which a lot
of people like.
I'm gonna put in the rest of my melted butter. When it's moist enough that you can kinda
mold it like clay, the finished crust will have a solid texture like a cookie, which
is usually what I prefer.
And there's no reason at all for you to take my word on the flavors with something like
this. Just have a taste and adjust. I think I'll need more sugar to balance the acidity
of the custard. And I'll do a little more cinnamon.
Just toss that together, and then you start molding it into the pie pan. This isn't rocket
science. But one thing to be careful of is that the crust in the corner tends to be way
too thick. Like you can't even push your fork through it. So I'm just going around with
my fingers and pinching the crust into that corner, to get it thinner in there.
You could call that done, but a lot of people take glass or a measuring cup or something
and just press it into the crumb. This is about getting it to uniform thickness, sure,
but it's also about compressing the crumb to help it hold together. Some people go around
the edge with the glass too, but I always feel like my fingers do a better job. You'd
need an object with the exact same angle as the rim of the pan.
There you go, that's it. Easy as ... well, you know. My oven is on 325 F convection — 160
C. If you don't have convection I'd do 350 F, 180 C. And we're just gonna blind bake
the crust for maybe 10 minutes. Just bake it empty. If we didn't do this, the crust
wouldn't be nearly as solid or as toasty at the end.
Out it comes. Don't worry if you see some butter pooling — it'll get reabsorbed.
While that cools down, we can make our filling. Time for the Key limes. The Key limes. OK,
so I don't have any, but you probably don't either.
Key limes are delicious. My dad used to grow them. They're these small, yellow limes that
have a distinct herbal or aromatic note, but they're not widely available unless you buy
the juice. A lot of people use this. Nellie & Joe's.
If you taste it, it has that distinct Key lime flavor, but it also just tastes like
old juice from concentrate, which is exactly what it is. I'd rather use fresh juice from
a Persian lime.
I want some zest, too, and it's always way easter to scrape off the zest before you juice
the fruit. I'm just running it down my microplane grater, giving it a slight rotation in my
hand, running it down again. Is that enough? Nah I think I want one more.
A lot of people don't use the zest at all in this. I think it tastes great. It's got
more lime flavor than the actual lime.
Time to cut these in half and juice them. Juice yours however you want, but I think
reamers are incredibly convenient, simple tools. I'm looking for at most a cup of juice,
235 ml. I ended up needing eight limes for that. Limes are incredibly variable in their
juice content, so always buy extra.
There we go. It's time to separate some eggs. We'll want 5-6 egg yolks. I'm just catching
the whites in a little bowl so that I can use them for something. Some people actually
replace the eggs in this pie with sour cream. I'm not a fan — I think that gets you something
that tastes more like a dip than a pie filling. But if you used like half a cup of vegan sour
cream, that would be a great option for a vegan pie.
Alright, I've got five there. A lot of folks would use those whites to make a meringue
topping for the pie — very synergistic, but Lauren likes whipped cream on hers instead
of meringue, so I will simply save these for an egg white omelette to counteract the pie
in my diet. Also synergistic.
Now the next thing — sweetened condensed milk. This is absolutely traditional. In fact,
the historical origin of pies like this might be from recipes promoted by the condensed
milk industry.
You'd normally make a custard with cream, but condensed milk has a much stronger milky
flavor that you can actually taste in the presence of all that lime juice. Cream would
just get lost. I'm using two of these 14-ounce cans, so that's 830 ml, 3.5 cups. Vegans,
there's a note in the description about how to make this with coconut milk.
I'll whisk those two things together before I whisk in the lime juice. It's easier to
break up the yolks when they're not sloshing around in a watery mixture, and getting the
sugar mixed into them makes it less like that the egg proteins will be curdled by all this
acid.
That said, early recipes for this pie were "ice-box pies" — pies that never go in the
oven. They used to rely on the acid from the lime to chemically cook the eggs. There's
some risk of foodborne illness there, which is probably why people eventually started
baking this pie.
I put in like 3/4 of a cup of my lime juice, and I'm tasting it. Yes, eating a small amount
of raw custard presents some small risk of foodborne illness, but I'm a big boy and living
is choices. If you don't like your pie very acidic, I'd stop there. Do the full cup only
if you like it very limey. That's nice.
Here's my zest from like three of the eight limes I juiced. You don't have to put this
in, but I think it adds a lot of lime flavor, as opposed to just lime acidity.
My crust is mostly cooled down now, which is important. If it was too hot, the bottom
layer of custard would get overcooked. It should look like you don't have quite enough,
because custards puff up a little bit in the oven – you don't want things overflowing.
You can thump that a little bit to make any large air bubbles come to the surface and
pop, but be gentle with a ceramic pie pan.
Back in the oven this goes, same temp as before. Here it is after 10 minutes, and I'm gonna
assess its doneness by just kinda shoving the pie pan. See how wobbly it is? We're looking
for it to firm up some more.
Here it is after 20 minutes. Still wobbly but you can see it's cooking on the inside.
Here it is after 30 minutes, and you probably don't want it any firmer than that. That's
the longest I would bake this. If you bake it until it has no bounce at all, it'll have
a curdled texture, not a creamy, smooth one.
Look at that. Beautiful. We've gotta let this cool on the counter for like an hour or two,
and then you have to chill it in the fridge overnight. You probably want to cover that,
but plastic wrap would stick to the surface and mess it up. So I'm doming this with an
upside down plate. Not an air-tight seal, but it should reduce air circulation enough
to keep the pie from drying out or picking up fridge flavors. Goodnight.
The next day, I'll whip the cream. I'm just doing a cup, 235 ml. You might want twice
that, depending on how much whipped cream you like on your pie. This is easy as you-know-what
with an electric hand mixer. 90 second later, I've got whipped cream. Mix in as much sugar
as you want for your taste, though powdered sugar is best for whipped cream that you want
to hold for a day or two. The cornstarch in it absorbs water that gradually weeps out
of the cream.
And a little vanilla. Be careful — too much will make the color go very brown. There we
go.
After a long chill, we can finally have pie. And as any pie-maker knows, the vanguard slice
is the forlorn hope. There's no way it's coming out pretty. So that's my piece.
Now that you've got some room in there work, you can get out a nice, pretty slice. But
I'm not gonna lie. It's a delicate pie. It's tricky to get out clean. It's why some people
use a springform pan for this.
They also sometimes cover the whole surface with whipped cream before slicing. I prefer
a dollop on top, so that you can dose out the cream at will.
You can grate a little more zest on top. That's nice because the zest inside usually turns
brown. And this is the kind of inedible nonsense that I'm purely doing for the thumbnail.
There you go. Nice, creamy soft custard, because we pulled it while it was still a little wobbly.
The crust basically tastes like a giant Golden Graham, and it's got that chewy, cookie-like
texture because we used a lot of butter. Lauren is pleased, just at you will be pleased by
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And thank you, Florida. I have mixed feelings about you, but this pie is great.