I am not a perfect person, and it is my habit to make mistakes when trying new things. And this blog is not about the perfect dessert or the best paint job – it is about experiments in grown-up living. What follows, then, is not the first, and not the last, of my epic fails in the kitchen. It has, however, inspired me to try again to see if I can get this right. I have added it to my DIY To-Do list on the right-hand column.
***EDIT: The Pie wanted you to know that, despite the aesthetics of the thing, this was the best-tasting pie I have ever made.***
I found a pound of key limes at Sobeys about a week ago so I thought I would make some key lime pie. Obviously.
Key limes are smaller and sweeter than their more common cousins.
Now, key lime pie and lemon meringue pie are easy. Really easy. I decided to experiment a bit with the recipe. The problem was that I was missing certain ingredients, which inspired me to experiment still further, and I was also coming off a rotten day, so making mistakes in the kitchen only added to my general frustration. DON’T BAKE WHILE ANGRY.
The recipe I will give you below is how I should have done it, and I will explain as I go about how I actually did it.
I have two very shallow 8″ pie plates, and this recipe filled both of those. I also have a deep 14″ pie plate, and it would probably fill that one by itself. One of my next purchases is going to be a standard 9″ pie plate.
Preheat your oven to 350°F. Start working on your crumb crust. In a bowl, mix together 1 cup chocolate cookie crumbs, 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut, and 2 tbsp granulated sugar. In the normal recipe, you would use plain graham crumbs and leave out the coconut. But that wasn’t fancy enough for me.
Add in 1/2 cup of melted butter and stir until the mixture is crumbly but still dry. You should be able to squeeze a handful of the crumb mixture between your hands and have it stick together, but not be greasy. My major failing with the crust is that several of the recipes I was using for inspiration had me add an entire cup of butter, which made my crust soggy and prone to collapse. You might need more than 1/2 a cup to make your mixture cohesive, but you shouldn’t need much more than that.
Put your crumb mixture into the pan and pat it up the sides and across the bottom evenly. For a nice, flat crust surface, press a slightly smaller pie plate into the larger one to smooth the edges.
Place your crusts in the oven and bake them for 10 minutes. Let cool and ‘rest’ while you do the rest of this.
Take a pound of key limes (about 24) and gather the zest of about half of them. I use a fine food rasp from Lee Valley with a zester catcher. It makes my life a lot easier. I recommend you pick one up. You can use a wood rasp as well (that’s pretty much what this is, anyway).
Zesting 12 tiny limes took quite a while, and only rendered about 2 tbsp of zest, but that’s all you really need.
Now we juice the limes. First, roll each lime on the counter while pressing with your hand. This will bruise the flesh inside and make them easier to juice.
Cut all the limes in half and juice those suckers. This took forever for me because the juicer kept sliding all over the place. I had to put down a silicone baking mat, kind of like this one from KitchenAid, to get the thing to stay still. Have patience. You should end up with about a cup of juice. Feel free to add more from a bottle if you feel you need more.
After this, I was already frustrated, and things started to go downhill for me. As I’ve said, I put too much butter in my crust, which had sagged to the centre of each pan. I pressed paper towels into the molten crust to remove excess butter and shored up the edges as best I could before baking them again and letting them cool.
Moving on … separate 6 egg yolks and plop those suckers in the bowl of your mixer. Most recipes say to use 4 yolks, which is what I did, but I had problems with the stuff setting. I will explain why shortly. Add your zest to the bowl along with 2 tbsp granulated sugar and mix on high for about 6 minutes until the stuff is pale and fluffy.
At this point you add your condensed milk. All the other recipes call for a 14-oz can of condensed milk (or, if doubling the recipe, two cans). What I have discovered, however, is that a 14-oz can is slightly over 400 mL, while the available cans in Canada seem to only contain 300 mL. Also I only had one can and I needed two. I did, however, have a 500 mL can of baker’s coconut milk (this is why I added the coconut to the crust). I figured adding the coconut milk would make the filling not as sweet, which is why I added a bit of sugar to the yolks and the zest. I might even add more sugar next time. Anyway, the coconut milk makes everything a little more runny, so that is why I suggested using 6 yolks instead of 4, just to make sure everything sets.
So you add in your coconut milk and your condensed milk and mix it on high again for another 5 minutes or so, until thick. Pour in the lime juice and mix until incorporated. Pour into the cooled crusts and bake for 25-35 minutes or until the filling has just set (as in, it shouldn’t be liquidy). Cool on a rack, then chill for at least an hour and serve with whipped cream.
Having only used 4 yolks, I had trouble getting my pie to set, though it was all right after I had chilled it. It was certainly not a pretty pie, but I plan to make up for it.
