Key Lime Pie
Updated July 7, 2025
- Total Time
- 1¼ hours, plus 4 hours’ cooling and chilling
- Prep Time
- 10 minutes
- Cook Time
- 1 hour 5 minutes, plus 4 hours' cooling and chilling
- Rating
- Comments
- Read comments
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Ingredients
- 1½cups/180 grams graham cracker crumbs (from 12 full graham crackers)
- ¼cup/50 grams packed light brown sugar
- 1teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal), or ½ teaspoon table salt
- 6tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
- 1(14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk
- 3large egg yolks
- 1tablespoon fresh finely grated Key lime zest and ½ cup juice (see Tip)
- ½teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal), or ¼ teaspoon table salt
- ¾cup heavy whipping cream
- 1½ tablespoons confectioners’ (or granulated) sugar, plus more to taste
- ¼teaspoon kosher salt (such as Diamond Crystal) or ⅛ teaspoon table salt
- 1 or 2Key limes, to zest for garnish
For the Crust
For the Filling
For the Topping
Preparation
- Step 1
Heat oven to 325 degrees. Prepare the crust: In a medium bowl, mix the graham cracker crumbs, light brown sugar, salt and butter until well combined. Pour the mixture into a 9-inch pie plate and press it firmly against the bottom and sides. (The bottom of a small measuring cup is useful for ensuring even thickness.)
- Step 2
Bake the crust for 15 minutes, until the color begins to deepen slightly. Cool completely.
- Step 3
While the crust cools, prepare the filling: In a medium bowl, whisk together the sweetened condensed milk, yolks, lime zest and salt. Add the lime juice and whisk until evenly combined and noticeably thicker, about 1 minute. (You may be tempted to prepare the curd in advance, but don’t do so more than 5 minutes before baking, as the lime juice may cause the mixture to curdle.)
- Step 4
Pour the filling into the cooled crust and bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until the curd is set at the edges and slightly jiggly in the middle. Transfer to a rack to cool completely at room temperature, about 1 hour, then cover and refrigerate for at least 3 hours and up to overnight.
- Step 5
Just before serving, make the topping: In a large bowl, beat the cream, confectioners’ sugar and salt with an electric mixer on medium-high speed until you have stiff peaks, about 2 minutes. Top the chilled pie with the cream, and then finely grate lime zest on top to garnish. Slice and serve. Leftovers will keep in an airtight container in the refrigerator for about 4 days, or in the freezer for up to one month.
- If you can’t find fresh Key limes, regular grocery-store limes, also known as Persian limes, will work fine. In order to better match the distinct tartness of a Key lime, use about ⅓ cup lime juice and add enough lemon juice to reach ½ cup. Bottled Key lime juice is also OK, though it might not have quite as bright flavor as fresh Key limes.
Private Notes
Comments
I grew up in Florida with a very prolific "Key Lime Pie Tree" outside my bedroom and squeezed thousands of limes over the years for my mother's pies. Most Florida old timers like me assert that a "real" Key Lime Pie is topped with a lightly sweetened meringue, not whipped cream. It seems intuitively obvious that's what the first pie-maker would have done with the leftover whites. I know, there's a debate, but take a second to think about it. And it's a lot more special than whipped cream.
Never buy bottled lime juice of any kind. Taste horrible. You'll never taste the difference between limes in a key lime pie. Cooks Illustrated did a blind taste test and absolutely no one could tell the difference.
My family’s favorite substitution is making the crust out of crushed Ginger Snaps. It wins over graham crackers by a mile!
Just want to echo a comment from a couple years ago and say that the filling needs to be doubled to fill a 9-inch pie dish. The 1x recipe just covered the bottom at a depth of maybe 1.5 cm leaving and inch of exposed crust. Perhaps the 1x recipe would fill an extremely shallow pie dish but for the average pie dish but 1.5x or 2x is needed. Don’t get caught like me having to whip up a batch with cold ingredients and having to mix it in with the temperate curd that’s already in the crust!
Tasty and excellent texture for the filling, but there were drawbacks: 1. crust was too dry and a bit too salty--I would add half the amount called for. 2. Ditto for the whipped cream--too salty, even though I increased the amount of cream to a full cup and kept the same amount of salt. (And this is from someone with no aversion to salt. 3. Not enough of a lime flavor.
This recipe is fine, as-is; and the addition of salt to the filling is something new to me and not objectionable- but I halved it (and always use diamond kosher salt) Recommend adding 1/2-1 cup diced ripe mango to the filling. Tried blueberries in the past- disappointing. Also, better to be minimalist with the whipped cream garnish.