Key Lime Pie

This is a real key lime pie, built the way my crew and I think it should be: a hand-pressed graham cracker crust bound with real butter — never shortening — under a filling made from freshly squeezed lime juice, not a bottle of green concentrate. We make every one by hand in our bakery in White Bear Lake, Minnesota.

The filling is a straightforward custard built on sweetened condensed milk, heavy cream, egg yolks, and freshly squeezed lime juice, set with a touch of vanilla extract and Himalayan sea salt. The crust is graham crackers pressed together with real unsalted butter — no shortening, no margarine, anywhere in this pie. Each pie is a net weight of 45.9oz (1300g). This is a traditional-style dessert made with real dairy, eggs, and wheat flour, so it isn't suited for keto, paleo, or carnivore diets.

This pie is fully baked and frozen - it's a thaw & serve specialty dessert, not a bake-at-home one. Move it to the refrigerator and let it thaw overnight; by morning the filling has set to its proper creamy texture and it's ready to slice straight from the fridge. No oven, no prep, just a fork.

Keep it frozen until you're ready to thaw it, then keep leftovers refrigerated and enjoy within a few days.

Ingredients: Sweetened Condensed Milk (Milk, Sugar), Heavy Cream (Cream, Gellan Gum), Freshly Squeezed Lime Juice, Graham Crackers (Unbleached Enriched Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Graham Flour (Whole Grain Wheat Flour), Sugar, Canola Oil, Honey, Leavening (Baking Soda and/or Calcium Phosphate), Salt, Soy Lecithin, Artificial Flavor), Egg Yolks, Unsalted Butter (Pasteurized Cream, Natural Flavoring), Sugar, Vanilla Extract (Vanilla Bean Extractives in Water, Alcohol), Instant Clearjel (Modified Food Starch), and Himalayan Sea Salt. Contains: Milk, Wheat, Eggs.

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Common Questions

How does this key lime pie compare to a conventional grocery-store version?
The biggest difference is in two ingredients: the lime juice and the crust fat. Most commercial key lime pies use bottled key lime juice concentrate, which is reconstituted and often blended with preservatives to survive months on a shelf; this one uses freshly squeezed lime juice, listed third on the ingredient panel, ahead of the graham crackers themselves. The crust is the other split — ours is graham crackers bound only with unsalted butter, while most bakery and grocery pies use shortening or a shortening-butter blend because shortening is cheaper and doesn't need refrigeration during production. Butter is roughly 80% fat and 15-18% water, and that water turns to steam in the oven, which is part of why a butter crust tastes different from a 100% fat shortening crust, even in a no-bake application like this one where the crust is baked once before filling.

What do the gellan gum and Instant Clearjel actually do in this pie?
Both are stabilizers, and both are doing a job specific to a frozen, thaw-and-serve product. Gellan gum is added to the heavy cream to keep the fat and water from separating during freezing and the subsequent thaw — cream that's frozen without a stabilizer tends to break and turn grainy once it comes back to temperature. Instant Clearjel, a modified food starch, thickens the custard filling and holds that thickened structure through a freeze-thaw cycle, unlike plain cornstarch, which breaks down and turns watery after freezing. Neither ingredient changes the flavor; they're there so the filling sets to the same creamy, sliceable texture whether you thaw it today or in three weeks.

Does this pie fit into a keto, paleo, or carnivore diet?
No, and it's worth saying plainly rather than stretching the truth. Under FDA labeling rules, ingredients are listed in order by weight, and this pie's first ingredient is sweetened condensed milk, followed by heavy cream, lime juice, graham crackers, and additional sugar — meaning sugar and milk solids make up a substantial share of the filling by weight. The graham cracker crust also contains enriched wheat flour and added sugar. That combination of dairy sugars, added cane sugar, and wheat flour puts this well outside keto (typically under 20-50g net carbs per day), strict paleo (no refined sugar or grain flour), and carnivore (animal products only) frameworks. It's a dessert built around real, simple ingredients rather than being formulated for a specific macro target.

Can this pie be used in other desserts, or is it only meant to be served as-is?
It's built and baked as a finished pie, so we'd treat it as the centerpiece rather than a component to break apart for other recipes. That said, once thawed, the filling holds its shape well enough to slice cleanly, so leftover slices work fine crumbled over vanilla ice cream or layered into a trifle glass with whipped cream if you want to stretch a few slices further. We wouldn't recommend re-baking or re-freezing portions once thawed, since the gellan gum and Clearjel are set up for one freeze-thaw cycle, not repeated temperature swings.

How can I verify the crust is really 100% butter and the pie is handmade in Minnesota?
The ingredient panel is the most direct proof — unsalted butter is listed as the only crust fat, with no shortening, margarine, or palm oil anywhere in the ingredient statement, and you're welcome to compare it line by line against any pie that lists shortening or a blend. Beyond the label, the pies are made by my crew and me in our bakery in White Bear Lake, Minnesota, in small batches rather than on an industrial line, which is why the crust is hand-pressed rather than machine-formed. We haven't pursued third-party certifications like organic or gluten-free, so we're not claiming those — what we can back up is what's printed on the ingredient list itself.

Why does the crust matter so much in a key lime pie specifically?
Key lime filling is a fairly wet custard — sweetened condensed milk, heavy cream, egg yolks, and fresh lime juice — so the crust is the only textural contrast in the whole pie; there's no top layer, no meringue, nothing else providing crunch. A shortening crust tends to hold up structurally but can taste flat and slightly waxy against a bright, acidic filling like this one. A 100% butter crust brings its own flavor and a shorter, more tender crumb because butter melts at a lower temperature than shortening, which changes how the graham cracker crumb binds during the initial bake. That's the whole reason we never use shortening in it — the crust needs to hold its own against the lime, not just hold the filling in.

What allergens are actually in this pie?
Per the label, this pie contains milk, wheat, and eggs — those come from the sweetened condensed milk, heavy cream, graham cracker crust, unsalted butter, and egg yolks in the custard. We haven't tested for or certified this product as free of any other allergen, including tree nuts, soy, or gluten, so if you have a specific allergy concern beyond the three listed allergens, check the full ingredient panel yourself rather than assuming based on what's not mentioned in the description.