Vegan Key Lime Pie Recipe

I used to like Key lime pie a lot that I would order it any time I noticed in on a menu. Sadly, my physique turned towards me as soon as I hit 30, selecting a battle at any time when I ate dairy. However as an alternative of giving up my favourite dessert, I used to be fairly certain I might make a lime pie with filling that was tangy, creamy, and candy, encased in a crisp crust, one you would be proud to serve at any occasion to vegans and non-vegans alike.

There’s quite a lot of nice pie info within the Critical Eats library, and I leaned on a number of recipes to give you my very own. From Stella Parks’s lime pie recipe, I borrowed the concept of including rosewater to give the lime flavor a bit of the freshness it loses throughout cooking. I additionally cherished that Stella’s investigation into the variations between Key limes and Persian limes, which sparked a controversy in Florida, primarily gave me permission to make use of the extra generally obtainable Persian limes. (Nonetheless, I nonetheless consider this as a Key lime pie, as that was the flavour profile I used to be making an attempt to attain.)

For the crust, I used Lauren Weisenthal’s terrific recipe for Key lime pie as a place to begin. My principal fear was that vegan butter would not have the ability to maintain the graham cracker crust collectively in addition to butter, however by successive trials, I lastly acquired a crust with good construction by regularly growing the quantity.

For the meringue on high, I did not should do something aside from use Nik Sharma’s perfect vegan meringue recipe.

With all that squared away, I simply needed to give attention to getting the dairy- and egg-free filling good. Sweetened condensed milk is a standard ingredient in Key lime pie recipes, and swapping it out for dairy-free sweetened condensed coconut milk appeared simple sufficient; the coconut taste is not too sturdy, so it does not distract from the lime. I wished to keep away from utilizing a number of nut merchandise because of nut allergic reactions, so I turned to silken tofu to accomplice with the coconut milk, which creates a creamy texture with some heft, and I turned to cornstarch to assist thicken it up and get it to set. Whereas I attempted to engineer the recipe so you could possibly fill the pie crust and bake all of it collectively to be able to cut back the variety of dishes, the filling by no means fairly set appropriately, so I selected as an alternative to warmth the filling on the stovetop till it was sufficiently thickend after which pour it into the ready crust. After chilling the pie, the custard units fantastically and the lime taste shines by, with a touch of a form of Creamsicle style due to the addition of vanilla extract.

October 2021