What? You know what. I don't know what.
Is it the -- is it the sweet condensed, the sweetened condensed milk over the
backdrop of my careless whisper shirt? I'm Alison Roman and I am going to be making a
Key Lime Pie today except I'm not using key limes I'm using regular limes. Lime pie just does not
have the same ring to it. If you have access to key limes, please use them. They are very tiny
and you will be juicing for a very long time. Key lime pie is sort of my platonic ideal of a
dessert. It is hyper acidic, it's not that sweet, and it has a very few ingredients. On top
of that, it combines two of my most favorite textures which are very, very crunchy in a
graham cracker crust and then super silky, almost custard-y, panna cotta-y, creme brulee-y in
the texture of the custard itself. Everything kind of happens like really quickly in the oven. It
doesn't need to bake for very long. There's a very very low risk of messing up this dessert. This is
the appliance-free version of this key lime pie. A lot of people will say, well couldn't I do it
with a mixer or couldn't I use a food processor? Of course you can. I always just like to default
to not because I figure if you don't have any of those tools, or you just don't feel like
grabbing them, or if like the difference between you making this dessert and not, is being
like am I really gonna take down my stand mixer, am I really gonna get out my food processor
and clean the bowl and the blade and blah blah then like now you have no excuse, question
mark? You want to make this key lime pie? Yay. So we're gonna start with graham cracker. There's
certain iconic desserts that I just feel like can't be improved upon in terms of
like what makes them iconic or classic and key lime pie is one of those things for
me, and I I feel like you know, could you do a different crust with it to like mix it up,
sure. But will that make up -- why are these really struggling? When I originally published
this recipe in my cookbook, Dining In, pictured here, I call for 10 graham crackers which
is I said it was about one and a quarter sleeves and I'm sorry. Please consider this my formal
apology. Every graham cracker brand has a different amount of crackers in their sleeve and
if you ever opened another sleeve just to get that one extra cracker, I am so sorry and I would
never ask you to do that ever again. So I call for ten graham crackers but guess what I'm using
nine and that's enough, that's gonna be fine. And instead of grinding this in a food processor,
I'm gonna just smash it in this bag like this. You just wanna make sure that all of the very
large lumps are broken up. The reason I like doing this by hand as opposed to in a mixer is because I
actually really enjoy the irregularity of crumbs. Oh okay well, in the bowl. This is too large. That's fine. So anything
larger than that break down to this size. I find that when the graham cracker crust is too sandy it
just kind of like stays sandy and it's like eating a spoonful of cinnamon or something it's like.
I want the texture of like the crunchy graham cracker. My oven is preheating uh to 350, which
is what we'll bake the crust and the filling at, and to this we'll add one tablespoon of sugar, a
pinch of salt (like three quarters of a teaspoon), and then six tablespoons of fat. You can
do all butter, you can do all coconut oil, I like a mixture of both um so
that's what I'm gonna use here. Because coconut oil and butter are solid in their
most natural state or their resting state I should say, it can be tough to measure with like an
actual tablespoon or a measuring cup, so sometimes what I'll do is I'll use a liquid measuring cup
and I'll guesstimate, and then once it's melted, I will measure it again. And you can bake
your key lime pie in a number of vessels. In order for it to be a pie, it should be in a
pie dish, which is a classic nine inch pyrex. I prefer glass to metal because I like to see the
bottom, this goes for all pies, butter crust pies, double cross pies, key lime pies. I think that
there is nothing better than a clear classic 9-inch pyrex. This is my go-to, it's not a
deep dish, it's a regular classic pie pan and they are shockingly hard to find. Most places
will try to sell you a deep dish pie plate or like with the fluted edges and I just don't like
them, so I special order these because while it is the most basic classic version of a pie plate,
I think that people are constantly trying to like upsell you with like a fancier version and I just
don't think it's necessary. I'm melting the butter and the coconut oil together so I can re-measure
it and make sure that I've got six tablespoons, but honestly like a tablespoon a teaspoon here or
there in your crust will not make a difference. It may seem counterintuitive to say that you
need to spray your pie plate if your crust has so much fat in it, which ours does, but it really
does make a difference. So I'm going to spray this with non-stick spray. And it's just like
a light spray uh to make sure that it doesn't stick afterwards. Probably my number one like
must-have ingredient when baking is non-stick spray, really it makes a huge difference. So
that was four tablespoons and this is two. So I'm just making sure that these crumbs are
really well saturated. You kind of do want to work it to make sure that it feels like wet
sand. This feels so good in your hands because it's still warm from the butter, and like
warm hot crumbs is a really special feeling, that you just have to feel to believe. I can't
describe it. I think the trickiest part of this whole pie is making the crust itself because it's
not something we're rolling we can't you know make it a certain thickness it's a crumbly thing and
we're like how is this crumbly mess gonna form a crust that will stay up but it will and I will
show you how. The most important thing to me is that we have enough crust around the edges.
I always take the crust and I kind of push it to the ends just to kind of envision what I'll
need because the bottom layer actually needs to, doesn't need to be that thick. You need a lot less
crust than you think and that goes for pie crust pies as well and then you have this weird pile
in the center, and you kind of just delicately. You can't be too aggressive here because this
crust is hanging on by an absolute thread. It's thinner than you think it should be
because we need that reinforcement on the pie walls. We need reinforcement of the pie
walls. Think about when you're slicing a pie, like that bottom layer should be just thick
enough to like hold the base. You don't want to have to cut into like a massive thick cookie at
the bottom, that's not what we're here for. This is a good technique for any type of crumb crust
taking a measuring cup and just kind of pressing, kind of packs it in without it sticking to
your hands and gives you a really nice flat even bottom and sort of
further presses in those walls. I always do this every time I'm making a
crumb crust. And then you can kind of just tap the inside. Once we take it out of the oven
from the second time it's gonna be a lot more stable, but right now, it's delicate so just be,
be gentle with it. Like delicately pick it up and put it in your oven and set a timer for
12 to 15 minutes. This is called the parbake, which means we're not taking it to its full bake
we're taking it halfway. Basically because once we put the filling in it's going to continue to bake
again, so we don't want it too brown now because then it would become almost burned on that
second bake. And while that's baking we're gonna make our filling. Great. Essentially the
filling is egg yolks, sweetened condensed milk, and lime juice. The most annoying thing that
we'll do this whole day is juice a million limes. And we need one full cup of lime juice, which is
a lot of limes. The amount of limes will really depend on the size of the lime, how juicy
the limes are, so it could be anywhere from 10 to 20 limes. I'm gonna guess these
limes, they feel hard, this is gonna suck a lot. If you feel like your limes
are hard you can like press on them and that will help them be a little bit
juicier. I'm gonna massage each individual lime, how lucky are these limes? Yeah these limes
suck. I'll massage, you juice. Okay, I like this game. I'm going to zest two limes
now because there's nothing worse than cutting into all your citrus
and then realizing you need some zest and then trying to like zest a
half of a lime or lemon, it sucks. Wait, why are you still doing this? It wasn't
good enough. I could feel a little firm. Oh bone dry! Bone dry! This is bad. This is
a disgrace. It did -- you can just tell like look at that, it's a it's a dry lime.
Here's a question I know you're gonna ask, can I use bottled lime juice? No you
can't. I'm sorry. If you won't drink it then I wouldn't use it for this pie and pre
pre-juiced limes that are sold in a bottle, the juice is pasteurized, the acidity is not the
same, the flavor is totally different. I don't trust it. I don't want it in this pie. Please
don't do that. We are taking the crust out now. It can be tough to tell when these crusts are
done, because the graham cracker is already brown. But it's done. In a perfect world this filling
would have been done. We were presented with a beautiful challenge, which is going to make
us stronger both literally and figuratively. Sometimes using a fork can help if you don't
have a reamer, you don't want to use your reamer, and just kind of like break up the little pulps
inside, but a bad lime is a bad lime, and like an unjuicy lime is unjuicy lime. A fork or a tool
will only help so much. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve
limes. We have a perfect one cup of lime juice. I'm not gonna strain it. The pulp does not
bother me at all and I don't think it'll bother you either. So for this you need a whisk
and a bowl. Four egg yolks go into your bowl. I'm using a bowl that is deeper than it is wide,
which I find easier to whisk. If you want to save the whites for something you can, I don't, so
I'm not going to. And those just get broken up. And then we're gonna add our sweetened condensed
milk. And this is just a can of sweetened condensed milk. They almost always come in 14
ounces. If it's an ounce or two more or less, that's okay. If you must know,
Careless Whisper is one of my top top three karaoke songs. Normally I duet it with
my friend Drew and on my, on the occasion of my 34th birthday, we like really went in hard on
the karaoke and him and I were doing Careless Whisper and the whole room was like, the
energy was was electric. It was palpable. People were screaming. We were, we were singing
there were tears and I take the microphone and I like yanked it out from the machine, it went
crashing to the floor, the karaoke machine broke, the party was over, I ruined my birthday.
But we went out on top with this song. We're whisking the egg yolk and the sweetened
condensed milk together until it's like paler, lighter, and fluffier. This will happen a
lot faster and a lot more efficiently in a stand mixer. That said, even
if this didn't become pale and fluffy at all and you just added the
juice now and put it in the crust, it would still be delicious. I just like to
try to beat as much air into it as possible, because it makes the final result a little
bit airier, a little bit more delicate. So you can see what it looks like right now. It just
kind of looks like yellow sweetened kind of milk. And then I switch not for camera
purposes but because my wrist gets tired. It hasn't quite doubled in volume, but
you can tell it's lighter, it's airier, it's paler in color, and it looks a
little thicker. I'm gonna add the zest and the zest is just to like reinforce
the lime flavor, it's not necessary. Top three karaoke songs: Careless Whisper, I'm
The Only One by Melissa Etheridge -- I almost always open with that because it's like not
too dancey but it like shows the vocal range, I do any Alanis, I always kind of like end the
night with Criminal -- Fiona Apple. So we have our crust (graham crackers, sugar, salt, butter,
coconut oil) and then we have our filling (which is egg yolks, sweetened condensed milk, lime
juice, lime zest). I'm going to add a small pinch of salt and then you pour it right in. I
like to do it like this in a circular motion. You don't want to pour the liquid directly in
one spot because it can like sink into the crust. Okay and just as gingerly as we put it in the oven
the first time, we're gonna put it back in the second time. We're gonna set a timer for 20 to 25
minutes. Our pie is in the oven. It's the second time the crust has been in the oven, but the first
time for the filling. It's baking for 20 to 25 minutes and during that time the eggs are setting,
it's like when you bake a custard, a creme brulee, something like that. But when we take it out
it'll still be way too jiggly, way too soft for it to be sliced, so then we're gonna chill it,
and that will sort of continue cooking the eggs and setting that custard because the acidity from
the limes is also what cooks the eggs. You may have even read some key lime pie recipes where you
don't bake the custard at all because the acidity from the limes is actually going to cook the yolks
but I like to do both just because people you know can be weird about raw eggs, but I also just think
that the final texture is a lot silkier that way, and less puddingy, more custardy. Our pie is
coming out of the oven. It's still a little jiggly and that's fine. I'm gonna let it hang here before
I put it in the fridge. I'm not going to put it directly into the fridge because that temperature
change can sometimes cause the top to crack. It can also cause condensation in your fridge and
steam and we don't want that. The other thing that I did also do is I sprinkled the top with flaky
salt when it came out of the oven. You'll notice that when you take it right out of the oven just
like a cheesecake or anything else that has eggs and like a custardy kind of way it souffles
slightly, but as it cools down it is gonna kind of settle and deflate a little bit. Which
I'll show you in our swap, which is this one. So this is the pie that I just pulled out, it's
gonna sit here for like another hour before I put it in the fridge. This is my pie that I made last
night, um it's the same recipe, just yesterday. It's the same recipe from the past. This is the same recipe from the future. When
I took this pie out yesterday it was jiggly just like that one and now no jiggle. It's
totally and completely set. You could touch it, that's why we're gonna cover it with whipped cream
anyway. Anyway which brings me to my next point which is whipped cream. So the topping, powdered
sugar, heavy cream, yogurt. If you had something like labneh or sour cream, that would also work in
yogurt's place. I wouldn't ever use 100% yogurt, or 100% labneh, 100% whipped cream because those
don't whip the same as yogurt. So I kind of use the whipped cream for height volume fluffiness and
then I use the additional fat for like creaminess, richness, flavor. All right this is seven ounces
of yogurt. I'm asking you to use eight ounces. I'm not gonna miss the ounce. It's fine we'll
compensate with whipped cream. But you want to start with the whipped cream but basically the
idea is is one to one heavy cream to yogurt. And you basically want to take this
almost all the way to whipped cream before adding your yogurt. This is a very special
kitchen task to me. I find it like very magical that you can just take a bowl of cream and have a
whisk and turn it into something else that is like markedly different and it happens
pretty quickly. It's already happening. See how it's like almost there? It's just, but it
looks kind of like not that stable. The reason I use powdered sugar instead of regular granulated
sugar is because the corn starch in the powdered sugar is going to help stabilize the whole
mixture. So I'm adding about a quarter cup here. The other reason I like powdered sugar
is because it dissolves immediately. So there you have like a pretty basic
whipped cream. It's like holding a peak. If I were to keep beating it just
like as is, it might turn to butter. And then I'm gonna add the yogurt again.
You could use sour cream. I would not use regular yogurt, it's too thin here
and it would dilute the topping. This takes forever. This recipe is a real workout.
Between the limes and this? My god, it's like a Barry's Boot Camp, a thing that I did a few times
and then stopped. This isn't like a billowy, like mile high type of topping. This is more like a
luxurious silky, it's soft, it's creamy. This texture of the inside of the pie is going to
be very set, so the top by contrast should feel very silky and like just held together. There
doesn't have to be like a decorative pattern on the top. This isn't a meringue pie where
you want to like pipe a star and like hold a shape. To me this is about like the textural
differences between this like soft creamy topping, the like more firm custardy filling, and
the very very crunchy, almost salty crust. Eat on camera? I'd be honored. It tastes
really good to me. And so sour but also like extremely balanced and doesn't feel heavy, it
feels like light. That's sort of why I always order it at the end of the night. There's just
like always room for key lime pie. I feel like it's light enough and tart enough where it kind
of just like wakes up your whole mouth and like your whole situation at the end of a meal.
I don't know it's like always appropriate. This is gonna suck so hard. I
can just tell, like look at this, it's not one drop.
