I recently followed this recipe for key lime pie and my family said it was the best one ever:
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
4 tablespoons (1/2 stick butter) melted
2 (14-ounce) cans sweetened condensed milk
1 cup key lime or regular lime juice
2 whole large eggs
1 cup sour cream
2 tablespoons powdered sugar
1 tablespoon lime zest
Directions
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
In a bowl, mix the graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and butter with your hands. Press the mixture firmly into a 9-inch pie pan, and bake until brown, about 20 minutes. Remove from the oven and allow to cool to room temperature before filling.
Lower the oven temperature to 325 degrees F.
In a separate bowl, combine the condensed milk, lime juice, and eggs. Whisk until well blended and place the filling in the cooled pie shell. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes and allow to chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.
Once chilled, combine the sour cream and powdered sugar and spread over the top of the pie using a spatula. Sprinkle the lime zest as a garnish on top of the sour cream and serve chilled.
43 comments:
chick, key lime pie is my favorite, followed closely by blueberry. I'll try this one. Maybe it's the power of suggestion but the best key lime pie I've eaten was in Key Largo. I had a good slice in Key West, but Key Largo was the best. Just a local seafood restaurant.
Key lime pie is very very good. It tastes best in the Keys, but it is good anywhere.
I had excellent key lime pie at some restaurant in Islamorado.
Ted Williams used to go to a restaurant in Islamorado after fishing and be his blowhard self. He retired down there.
Sounds delish. Hungry now. :)
One of my favorite things, along with Boston Cream Pie and chocolate eclairs.
1 cup key lime or regular lime juice
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Supposedly it makes a difference to use key limes.
They are sweeter maybe?
Or different acidity.
@madawaskan: They do taste different than regular limes. They are tiny though and it takes 20 or so of them to get a full cup. That's a lot of lime squeezin'.
This sounds awesome. Copying and pasting into my cookbook/recipe program for later.
El Pollo Raylan said...
@madawaskan: They do taste different than regular limes. They are tiny though and it takes 20 or so of them to get a full cup. That's a lot of lime squeezin'.
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Oh that's what I forgot!
I think I even tried to grow a small key lime tree once because I am cheap.
Complete fail.
Plus someone in the fam tried to make it once and it ended up tasting like metal.
Yuck!
My husband thanks you.
Do you suppose it would work with splenda in the pudding, crust and topping?
I think we could go off of low-carb for the graham crackers but not all the sugar. (I tried almond meal for a graham cracker type crust and it... didn't work).
I wonder if key limes are the same as the tiny limes we had in the Philippines. They certainly were different from regular limes but I couldn't say how, exactly.
I wonder if the big ethnic market in town would have them. I might need to check on that.
Synova: Replacing the sweetened condensed milk would be the tougher replacement. That stuff is like what they give hospital patients to add calories. You can make ice cream from the stuff.
The pie is supposed tp serve 8. Four of us devoured it in one sitting. It's wicked good.
Darcy said...
Sounds delish. Hungry now. :)
It's more addictive than Cheetos.
Chick, my grandma used to make cake frosting out of sweetened condensed milk (Eagle brand) by boiling the can of milk. Really strange, but it tasted so good on the cake she made.
Kind of caramel.
I need an Atkins version. This is my favorite kind of pie. You've inspired me to try some experiments.
And just when I've been off the Cheetos for years now... ;-)
@Freeman: What would you use for an Atkins crust?
@Darcy: Eagle still makes sweetened condensed milk. That's what I used -- two whole cans. It's obscenely rich.
I'd probably go crustless. Or make a toasted almond crust. I think almond flour plus egg plus Splenda plus coconut oil might make a good crust. Or coconut flour might be worth trying.
I make a lot of crustless quiche. Long ago I knew how to make a low carb friendly cheesecake, but I'd have to dig out the recipe.
I'd probably go crustless
It might work. The crust just adds flavor. You serve it chilled like cheesecake so it stands up on its own. If it gets warm it's going to turn back into pudding.
My favorite Key Lime Pie recipe uses macadamia nuts in the crust and has a meringue topping that incorporates Key Lime juice. I only make it once in a blue moon because, like you say, it takes a lot of squeezing to get enough Key Lime juice for the pie.
Eagle brand.
Sweetened condensed, not evaporated.
It has a lot of sugar in it.
And this recipe adds more sugar.
And cream
So those ingredients are doubled.
Cooked eggs set the custard, but did you notice if you dump in all the acid in and stir, it thickens immediately like magic?
I was experimenting with different custards, cream, sugar, egg, citric acid, zest. Everything I tried turned out delicious and would work well in a pie.
There is a group of people who have their key-lime pie imprinted on their brains from a recipe printed on the back of Eagle brand milk and they do not appreciate deviations so much, but I think my attempts beat that without being tied to a product.
I've made them stovetop and poured into the baked shell to set in the refrigerator. Only the shell is baked.
Freeman Hunt said...
I need an Atkins version. This is my favorite kind of pie. You've inspired me to try some experiments.
July 25, 2013 at 8:03 PM
I can see eliminating the sugar (you can bake with Splenda)...but it is hard to make a key lime pie out of meat or fish?
Might use shredded coconut in the crust with some other stuff?
Here's a low carb key lime pie that might be worth trying.
Is it possible to get unsweetened condensed milk? Just use cream?
Another person elsewhere said she made this, added sugar free lemon syrup, and was surprised to find that it tasted like key lime pie.
This person has a recipe for a low carb version of sweetened condensed milk.
Coconut milk is not necessarily Atkins, but it is low in carbs. Then again, there is nothing wrong with cream.
My thought is with pie, baring some specific food allergy, you really owe it to yourself and your loved ones to make it as fabulously and decadent as possible and then limit yourself to a small piece. Even if you have to give the rest of the pie away to avoid temptation.
If you are diabetic you can substitute Splenda for the sugar.
Do NOT use regular lime juice. Key limes juice is different, and can be found in bottles in most grocery stores.
Low-carb: we make crust less quiche by lining the quiche pan with parchment paper, then removing it when the quiche has cooled.
A pie doesn't need a crust. Put the pie stuff in individual ramekins.
Almond flour pancakes are awesome. Way better than wheat flour pancakes.
Low carb doesn't work like that though. You have to adjust to it, and it is no fun readjusting. I prefer to eat bizarre low carb versions of desserts instead. Plus, I like the strange food experiments.
Chick:
"@Darcy: Eagle still makes sweetened condensed milk. That's what I used -- two whole cans. It's obscenely rich."
Yeah, baby.
Too lazy to link, 'Can't get enough of your love, babe.'
Almond flour pancakes are awesome. Way better than wheat flour pancakes.
I agree times ten. Same with chocolate chip cookies. (Not that the cookies are low carb, but I've made them in the past.)
I'm not into "detoxing" or eating vegan, and this recipe sounds ridiculous when you read it, but these cookies are delicious.
Not low carb.
We haven't heard from Palladian since he barbequed that turkey.
No pies from Palladian.
Thanks for all the alternative recipes and comments!
Pie brings people together.
I'm wondering if that's not too much butter in the crust. Whenever I've used that much, the crust becomes too solid to easily get a fork through. Here's a horror story about that.
One night, I brought a key lime pie with pretty much the same recipe (except I add finely chopped zest to the custard) to a dinner party with a very famous and successful American composer. He put his fork into the pie, and the crust was so unyielding that when he broke through, the force required snapped off a large piece of the pie that skittered off the plate, became airborne and crash landed into the upper sleeve of his corduroy sport coat.
Utter mortification.
I'm sure that I heard a bit of anger about that sport coat in the Dies Irae in his next choral mass.
Since then, I use only a quarter cup of butter and only bake the crust with the filling. Comes out tender and lovely. I'd love another shot at redemption, but the last time I mentioned it to him, he was having none of it. However, he was writing an organ concerto at the time, and that will make a guy peevish. I'll try again when he's done.
- Krumhorn
:) Krumhorn
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