The Best Key Lime Pie Has a Store-Bought Secret

In this video, I'm going to show you my well-tested recipe for key lime pie. My version relies on a well-set custard that turns up the key lime flavor in a pretty unexpected way and a crust that has a cookie-like crunch to it, thanks to two semi-secret ingredients. This is a very good version of this pie. To get started, I'm going to preheat my oven to 375F real quick. Then I'm going to melt 65 grams of butter in a little saute pan here. And I'm doing that over a really mellow heat. I just warmed butter that's melted. If this butter gets too hot and you go to add it to the graham crackers, it's going to make a tacky, sticky crust that's going to be really challenging to properly press out into the pie plate. Once the butter is just barely melted, I'm going to set it aside. Now, to make the graham cracker crust, I'm going to grab 230 grams of graham crackers and smush those into a food processor. By the way, I'm using cinnamon-flavored graham crackers because I think it gives the crust a little bit of a snickerdoodle flavor. Then I'll add in 30 grams of sugar, 25 grams of non-fat dried milk powder, which is a really crazy ingredient to put into graham cracker crust, but I'll explain what it does in just a second, and then finally 4 grams of salt. From here, I'll pop on the lid and then spin this up for 30 to 45 seconds. Personally, I like something that's more broken down because I find that you can compress it into something that bakes up a lot better and it turns itself into more of a cohesive whole. More traditional key lime pie recipes use a coarser grind on the graham crackers, and that's fine. It's just not my truth. I find that coarser graham crackers never really come together into a fully set crust. Then when it's on the plate with custard, it falls apart into this crumbly mess that I don't think is very rewarding texturally. Next, I'm going to add in all 65 grams of my melted butter and then 65 grams of heavy cream, which is another radical ingredient to add to a graham cracker crust, but it's going to give us an insane result, and I'll explain why in just a second. Lid goes back on, and I'm going to spin this until everything comes together into damp sand, essentially. 15 seconds later, I'll kill it. That looks pretty good, but there's a little bit of graham cracker dust on the bottom here, so I'm going to give it one quick scrape. I'll pop on the lid and pulse it for another 5 seconds just to make sure everything comes together. There we go. Now we've got something that looks like it has the texture to make an excellent sand castle, basically. It's like damp sand. Also, a test I like to do to make sure that this crust is moist enough is to give it a squeeze with my hand and just make sure that I can compress it like that, and that looks perfect. If right now you're like, hey man, I don't have a food processor, that's not a problem. You can throw the graham crackers into a freezer bag, smash them up, combine everything in a bowl, and you're going to have a very, very similar result. Okay, once that's spun up, I'm going to grab my pie plate and some pan spray, and I'm just going to hit that with a liberal amount. In my testing, I had a couple recipes that looked really good, but a little bit of the crust got stuck, and it was so annoying that at this point I'm always going to be hitting it with pan spray just as a precautionary measure. From here, the graham cracker sand is going to go into my sprayed pie dish, and then I'm just going to press this with my fingertips out towards the edges and up the sides a little bit. At this point, we're just trying to get even distribution of the crumbs. We're not really trying to compress anything at this point. You want to make sure that there is roughly the same amount of volume throughout this entire thing so we can have a really beautiful, homogenous crust. Also, if you come across any large clods, break those down. I can tell that there's a bit more on the bottom half here, so I'm just going to kind of try and migrate those up towards the middle. There we go. Okay, once I've got a relatively even dispersion of crumbs inside the pan itself, I'm going to come back and start compressing it into a cohesive crust. To do that, I'm just going take three fingers on my left hand here, kind of press the crust up the side, and keep it formed with my right thumb there. This is going to take a second, so you don't have to get it perfect first time around. This is really just getting the crumbs pressed together. Later we'll come and make some finer detail changes, but this stage is really just about turning it from crumble into crust. I'm also going to press the middle a little bit. A good move is to maybe take a cup measure and allow that to do some of the heavy lifting. You can really start compressing it into the bottom of the pan with this. You can probably get away with hands only, but I think you do get an extra 10 to 15 percent of crunchy crust texture if you press it really, really good like this. That's my particular favorite, is when the crust kind of snaps under a fork. I don't want it to crumble apart. I want to press a fork to the point where it kind of cracks like a cookie. Now, to bring that level of compression to the sides, I'm going to bring the cup and press it kind of on a diagonal like this. This time I'm using my left hand to kind of keep the top edge contained, and I'm pressing the two together. From here, it's a matter of just kind of zhooshing this until it fills the pie plate in a way that you feel is aesthetically pleasing. I'm just going to keep pressing probably for longer than I should until I feel like it's looking beautiful. You can use gluten-free graham crackers for this as a one-to-one sub, and the results are going to basically be exactly the same. Once I've got this pie crust well compressed here, I'm going to come back and just try and form up the sides a little bit by pressing outwards with the side of the cup measure. I do think there is a benefit to getting the crust overlapping the outer rolled edge of the pie tin a little bit, just because it helps it from sloughing off in. If the sides of the crust are vertical and you bake it, it can kind of collapse into something flabby like this. On the other hand, if the crust edges are kind of out like that, they're resting on the pie tin and they just don't slouch as much. Does that make sense? I mean, this pie is already looking really good and you can bake it at this point. The final step is to just come back with a little butter knife along the edges and maybe tuck in any crumbly bits of graham cracker that might be hanging out. This gives me a quick second to explain why I've got these two special ingredients in here, the non-fat dried milk powder and the heavy cream. First, the non-fat dried milk powder brings extra protein and extra milk solids. The extra protein gives the crust a bit more structure and allows it to set up into something that's a little bit more firm with a better texture. And of course, the extra milk solids just make the crust taste better, because once they're baked, they're going to get toasted like brown butter and that tastes good. The heavy cream is in here because it brings a little bit of extra moisture while also bringing butter fat. Remember, heavy cream is the precursor to butter, which is butter with more water in it, basically. And having a little bit of extra moisture here just makes the crust like 30% to 50% easier to shape. And it also brings some milk solids that are going to brown up in the oven and make this taste really good. When all that comes together, it just makes it easier to shape. It gives it a better, more set texture and makes it more flavorful. Once I've got the pie crust laid out into, let's say, a quarter inch all the way through the middle and up the sides, and then also rolled over the edges like this, it's time to bake it. For that, I'm going to pop the pie crust onto a little sheet tray, just because it makes it easier to get it in and out of the oven. And then from here, I'm going to load this into a 375F oven and I'm going to bake it for 12 to 14 minutes. Now, while that bakes, let's quickly bust out the key lime custard. So for that, into a medium bowl, I'm going to add one can of sweetened condensed milk, which is about 400 grams or 14 ounces, give or take. Then I'm going to add in seven egg yolks, which is more than is traditional, but I like a really set custard that's got a firm texture. Then 75 grams of sour cream. This is also not traditional in the basic key lime pie recipe, but the acidic twang of this brings some really interesting flavor and it brings a little bit of extra fat to cut through the sourness of the limes. Then I'll add in two grams of salt and 120 grams of Nelly and Joe's store-bought key lime pie juice. And then I'll just whisk everything together. Now, I know somebody out there right now is furiously typing, hey, bro, fresh juice is always better, right? Well, not really. I tested this recipe like eight or nine times with different variations of fresh lime juice. I even went out of my way to get fresh key limes thinking that that would be the holy grail. And the thing about fresh lime juice is that it's just too sour. I tried using less. It still had this puckery quality that kind of hurt my mouth. So I opted to try the Nelly and Joe's stuff and it was really, really good. And it tasted like key lime pie should taste. The thing about key lime pie is it's this cultural nostalgic creation that we all grew up eating. And the idea that we have in our minds most likely is the store-bought juice because the diners in Chicago and on either coast, they're not getting fresh key limes to make the pie. They're buying something like Nelly and Joe's or the exact product of Nelly and Joe's. And it tastes really good, guys. It has that beautiful key lime flavor. It's not rounded off or compromised. It's a really good product. I got mine at Walmart, so there's a high probability that you're going to be able to find it in your town. But if you can't find it and you need to use fresh lime juice, I would say use 20 to 30 grams less and maybe add in just like a tiny pinch of vanilla extract to recreate that vanilla-y tropical flavor that you get from a fresh key lime. Also, if you're wondering about lime zest, a lot of recipes use that to make it taste more limey. I don't like it because baking the custard with lime zest in it turns the lime zest brown and it rounds off its fresh, fragrant flavor. So we're going to add some raw, fresh on at the end. Once this is all whisked together, I'm going to set this aside and then quickly thank Made In for sponsoring this vid. If you guys have ever wondered what cookware I use on this channel, it's almost exclusively Made In products because they make professional quality products designed for home cooks. So professional, in fact, that Made In products are used in multiple three Michelin-starred restaurants across the country, including Alinea and Le Bernardin, which are some of the best restaurants in the world ever, period. About four years ago, I replaced my entire collection with Made In products because I realized at the time I cook professionally on camera and the stuff that I'm cooking in is either hand-me-downs from Kohl's that I got on sale or stuff that I basically stole from the restaurants that I was working in. In particular, I really like their stainless line because it has this five-ply construction that holds heat really, really well. It transfers that heat to food insanely well, and it can go from the stovetop to the oven up to 800 Fahrenheit, which is insanely hot. I also want to shout out the form factor details that I think they've totally nailed with this line of pan. The first is this rolled rim, which not only makes tossing food very pleasurable and ergonomically much easier, but it also allows you to pour sauces out of the side of the pan without making a mess. Also, I think the angle of this handle is a dream come true. You'd be surprised how many saute pans have a curved handle that's really awkward to hold or it comes out at a weird angle and it makes toss-tossing nearly impossible. If you guys want to check out Made In's stainless collection or any of their other very high-quality cookware, I'll throw a link in my description. If you click it, you can save some money on your order. Again, link in description. Thank you, Made In. After about 12 to 13 minutes, we've got a nice and golden brown crust that smells super toasty. Importantly, the crust didn't slouch into the pie tin. I really hate when that happens because it gives you a much shorter pie that can't hold as much custard, which is bad. You'll also notice that it's a little bit puffy straight out of the oven. That's totally to be expected. It's going to deflate as it cools and it's going to be good to go. It smells so good too. It's kind of got this blonde butter smell. It's not quite as intense and roasty and toasty as brown butter, but it's somewhere in the middle. It's kind of like hazelnut and it smells really, really good. Now, from here, I got to let this chill out for a second because it's quite hot. If we put the custard in, it might curdle. I'm going to give it about five to 10 minutes to cool off, then we're going to continue. Once my crust is cooled down, I'm just going to turn my oven down to 325 because that's our custard baking temperature. Then I'm going to grab my custard and just pour it into the pie crust. Scrape out as much of that custard as I can. All right. Give it a little wiggle to make sure it's settled evenly. That's it. There's nothing special here. I don't need to get out any gas bubbles or anything really because this is going to get covered with whipped cream and you're not going to see them, so there's no fanciness there. From here, I'm going to load this into my 325F oven and I'm going to bake it for, let's call it 15 to 19 minutes without convection. Convection ovens can kind of dry out custards in my opinion, so I prefer not to use it, but bake time is going to vary pretty widely depending on your oven and what temperature the box actually is. We'll check back in about 16 to 17 minutes. After about 18 minutes or so, pull out the pie and give it a little jiggle to see if it's cooked all the way. Smells amazing though. We're just going to give it a little one of these. You can see it's set up around the edges, but the middle is still a little bit too jiggly for my taste. Overcooking this pie is actually pretty hard to do and there's not really any consequences for cooking it a little bit more. It's pretty hard to curdle, but undercooking it, the pie is going to be loose and run all over the plate and it's not going to have great texture. I always err on the side of cooking a little bit more, so I'm going to throw this back in for another two minutes or so and that'll make the total cook time about maybe 19 minutes, 20-ish, so we'll check back then. Oakley doakley. Time to check this thing one last time and I can already tell that the little bit of looseness in the middle has set up now. So now I'm just going to give it one final jiggle and I'm going to call it good. It's set up most of the way. The inner inch maybe has a tiny bit of jiggle left, but that's okay. This pie is actually going to carry over cook as it cools down. Speaking of that, at this point, I'm going to cool the pie to room temperature, then throw it in the fridge covered overnight so that the custard can fully set and more importantly, the pie can get cold. In my opinion, this is an aesthetic detail that is absolutely necessary. If you're the type of person who just can't bear to wait for this pie to cool down and you have to eat it on the same day, cool it for at least two hours, but preferably like four hours. It really makes a big difference. If you can't handle that, you should probably make a different type of pie because custard-based pies aren't good warm, they're not good kind of warm, and they're not good at room temperature in my opinion. So don't skip this step. The good news is that I've got a TV magic pie that's been totally cooled down and totally set and it's ready to rip. I did drop something in it and that bothers me a lot, but we're going to be covering it up with whipped cream so it doesn't really matter. To make that into the bowl of my stand mixer, I'll add in 250 grams of heavy cream, then I'll pop on my whisk and then whisk this until it reaches stiff peaks, which takes about three to five minutes depending on what speed you're going at. I'm going at seven out of 10 right here, which is pretty vigorous. I don't like to go much faster than that for whipped cream because if you're whipping it up at 10, it comes up to stiff peaks really, really quickly, but it can then break into butter really, really quickly. So going at a slightly lower speed for a little bit longer time gives you a little bit of safety margin so you don't accidentally make butter. Oh, one more thing I want to add in is just like a really small pinch of salt, maybe like a half a gram. You don't want too much salt in here because it can really exhaust your palate and a little bit goes a long way, but if you don't have it, it's going to be missing something. Okay, and after let's call it four minutes or so, I've reached what I call stiff peaks, which means that the whipped cream can hold itself up pretty completely. Sticks straight up, tastes really good, but it's not finished. At this point, I'm going to add in 50 grams of powdered sugar and five grams of vanilla extract. And then on low speed, I'm just going to spin that in. Sometimes it's better to add the powdered sugar at the end because if you add it at the beginning, it would kind of weigh down the heavy cream and just keep it from reaching its peak level of aeration or whippiness. And once that's mixed in, we'll just kill it and give it a little taste. Oh boy, that's pretty special. It's super vanilla-y, so light, it's fatty. It's really good. Now, I see a couple of people out there thinking to themselves about Cool Whip, and if that's your truth, it's totally fine. Cool Whip is actually a pretty good tasting product in my opinion. Don't flame me in the comments for that. It's true. People like Cool Whip for a reason. Now, this pie is actually way more about the taste of the custard and the texture of the crust than it is about the whipped cream topping. So if you want to save yourself some mess and a homemade whipped cream is good and it is quite a bit better. So if you want to have the S-tier experience, I'd recommend making it yourself. Now, to gild this lily, I'm going to flip my whipped cream out onto the top of the custy and then I'm just going to carefully and deliberately spread it around into sort of an organic, whippy shape or just until it looks pretty to me. Try to get it into an even layer though and try and avoid smearing the whipped cream onto the crust because it kind of just makes it look a little bit amateur. If you're wondering when the best time to add this cream is, if it's right before serving or if you should do it a little bit ahead of time, I lean towards ahead of time just because you can throw it back in the refrigerator and it allows the heavy cream to set a little bit. So that way when you put a knife in it, you get cleaner slices and the whipped topping doesn't get as smushy. And then the last move is just to kind of maybe give it a bit of a swirl in towards the middle. You don't have to do that. I just think it makes it look a little bit more finished and just like a little bit more like a pastry chef made it. There we go. That's a pretty good looking key lime pie for a non-pastry chef. Okay, from here I'm going to chill it a little bit, then we're going to cut a piece and give it a taste. The first piece is always a challenge. Absolute filth. Oh man, look at that thing. Oh bro, I'm so happy. And then the last move is to just put a little bit of fresh lime zest on top. This is just the last little detail that brings home that very fresh, very tropical lime flavor. Now it's time to give it a bite. Oh baby, the fork goes right through the custard. It's nice and set, super firm. It's like a one-to-one ratio of cream to custard too, which I really like. Wow, it's so good. First of all, the acidity is perfect. It's enough to pucker your mouth and make it water, but it's not so much that your mouth hurts or it's experiencing sourness. Plus the key lime flavor, subtle, delicate, very tropical. There's a bit of vanilla flavor that's signature to the key lime that comes through throughout the entire bite. When you throw that in with the milk powder, heavy cream crust, that is toasty, well-set, crispy like a cookie. It's just a, what do you call it? It's a top tier pie experience, a TTPE. And it's pretty easy compared to a fruit pie where you have to make a perfect butter crust and roll it out and cut up like three or four pounds of fruit. It's very simple. I hope you guys make the recipe. If you want to, I'll throw the short version in the description beneath this video. Then I'm going to throw a link to the long version, which will take you to my blog, BrianLagerstrom.com. If you're actually going to make it, that's probably the best place to go. As always, guys, thank you so much for your time and attention. Thank you for sticking around to the end of the video and I'll see you next time.