Florida · Dessert
Key Lime Pie, Florida Keys
- Intermediate
- 60 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, richness that coats and comforts, on a slow, honest burn.
Ingredients
- For the crust: 200g graham crackers crushed, 100g sugar, 115g butter melted
- For the filling: 4 egg yolks, 400g sweetened condensed milk, 150ml key lime juice, 1 tbsp lime zest
- Whipped cream and lime zest to finish
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Mix the crumbs, sugar, and butter and press into a 23cm pie plate. Bake at 175C for 10 min and cool. 10 min
- Whisk the yolks with the lime zest until pale, then beat in the condensed milk.
- Add the lime juice and whisk until the mixture thickens visibly: the acid sets it.
- Pour into the crust and bake at 175C for 12-15 min, just until set with a faint wobble. 15 min
- Cool, then chill 4 hours. Top with whipped cream and zest before serving. 240 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
The wobble & the skewer: testing a bake 135 recipes
- Tested at the true centre and the thickest point, not at the convenient edge: the edge is done long before the answer is.
- The skewer comes out as the recipe describes, clean and dry or carrying the stated moist crumb, and it does the same on a second test in a different spot.
- The wobble is read in motion: nudged, the centre moves as one set mass with a faint tremble, rather than a liquid ripple travelling across the surface.
- The other signs agree with the test: risen and just shrinking from the sides, the top set and dry to a light touch with no wet gloss on it.
- Pressed lightly at the middle it springs back and leaves no lasting dent.
Where it goes wrong It was judged on the clock and on how the edges looked, so a centre still liquid went to the rack and sank as it cooled, a dense wet seam under a perfectly browned top.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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