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BA’s Best Key Lime Pie

A slice of key lime pie with whipped cream topping against a blue background.
Alex Lau

A standout Key lime pie recipe is all about striking balance: The crunch of the homemade graham cracker crust should play off a creamy custard pie filling that’s both sweet and tangy. This recipe delivers just that.

It comes down to a few ingredients and techniques: To ensure it stays crisp, the crust is blind baked, meaning it’s popped in the oven for a bit before the Key lime filling is added. You can complete this step up to two days in advance or use the baking time to make the custard. Using coconut oil in place of some of the melted butter in the pie crust offers hints of the tropics. Fresh Key limes, which are named for the Florida Keys, can be hard to track down, but they are worth seeking out for their floral finish. If they’re not available in your local market, you can snag a bag online via sites like Etsy and Wee!, or opt for Persian limes (the variety available at most grocery stores), which are larger and more tart. Just make sure to stick with fresh lime juice—shelf-stable, bottled versions aren’t reliable. Sweetened condensed milk supplies the sugar in the filling and also gives this pie its concentrated creaminess.

For the finish, we eschewed meringue—which can sometimes be a little too cloying—in favor of whipped cream cut with yogurt for one last hit of tang.

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What you’ll need

Ingredients

Makes one 9" pie Servings

Crust

14

graham crackers (about 1½ sleeves)

4

tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, melted

4

tablespoons virgin coconut oil, melted

1

tablespoon sugar

½

teaspoon kosher salt

Filling and assembly

4

large egg yolks

1

14-ounce can sweetened condensed milk

2

teaspoons finely grated lime zest, plus more for garnish

¾

cup fresh key lime (or regular lime) juice

Pinch of kosher salt

1

cup heavy cream

¼

cup powdered sugar

1

cup full-fat Greek yogurt

1

tablespoon dark rum (optional)

Preparation

  1. Crust

    Step 1

    Preheat oven to 325°. Using your hands, crush graham crackers in a large bowl until coarsely ground (you could do this in a food processor if you’d like, just be sure not to process too finely; you want some texture in the larger pieces). Add butter, coconut oil, sugar, and salt and mix until well blended (mixture will resemble wet sand). Transfer to a 9" pie dish. Using your fingers and the underside of a flat measuring cup, press mixture evenly into bottom and up sides of dish. Bake crust, rotating once halfway through, until golden brown on top and crumbs are set, 12–15 minutes. Let cool.

  2. Filling and Assembly

    Step 2

    Using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat egg yolks and condensed milk in a large bowl until paler and almost doubled in volume, about 5 minutes. Whisk in 2 tsp. lime zest, lime juice, and salt. Pour into cooled crust. Bake pie until filling is starting to slightly puff around the edges and center jiggles slightly, 15–20 minutes. Let cool completely.

    Step 3

    Whip cream and powdered sugar in a large bowl until stiff peaks form. Gently whisk in yogurt and rum, if using. Dollop onto cooled pie, creating dramatic peaks and valleys with an offset spatula or the back of a spoon. Garnish with lime zest.

    Do Ahead: Crust can be baked 2 days ahead; pie without whipped topping can be made 2 days ahead; pie can be assembled (with topping) 4 hours ahead. 

    Editor’s note: This recipe was originally published in April 2015. This way for more of our best pie recipes →

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Reviews (276)

Back to TopTriangle
  • I’ve made this several times and it is now my go to key lime recipe. The chunky graham crust adds a nice texture and I will never make whipped cream without Greek yogurt, it was next level. In her newsletter recipe she uses a whole cup of lime juice and it’s not too much in my opinion

    • Tom S

    • Philadelphia

    • 8/13/2023

  • Love this recipe and love key lime pie! One variation that I've made in this recipe is to add lightly toasted desiccated dried coconut to the crust to increase the coconut flavor, because I find that the coconut oil on its own doesn't give me the amount of coconut flavor that I prefer. I usually measure out the crushed graham crackers by volume then replace some of it with coconut, to taste. I may attempt a fully coconut crust, as a fun way to try a gluten-free version. I haven't had the experience of having too much crust and actually usually don't have enough. I would love it if the recipe used a weight measurement for the graham crackers, as measuring by cracker is pretty inconsistent, but it's not too tricky to adjust to make it work. I've also tried sprinkling the same dried coconut on top, but found that it added a grainy texture to the pudding that I didn't like, so I've since omitted that change.

    • M. Bowen

    • Oregon

    • 9/2/2022

  • This is by far one of the worst key lime pies that I ever tried. I know that we all have different tastes and opinions, but believe me when I’ve tried multiple recipes and this is a complete NO.

    • AGG2103

    • Connecticut

    • 7/9/2022

  • I’ve made this recipe 5-6 times and it’s ALWAYS a hit. The crust amount is a bit much but it’s sooo good that I don’t think anyone minds. I don’t think cooking until it “stops jiggling” is the best measurement for how long to leave it in. I leave it for 20 mins and let it firm in the refrigerator. I also use half lime juice, half bottled key lime juice. I also do about 3/4 of the amount for the topping. But I started doing all of the adjustments according to my own tastes. The first time I made the pie, I followed the recipe as it is and it turned out great.

    • Ess

    • DC

    • 7/5/2021

  • Just a great recipe for a terrific KLP. I've made it many times, most recently for Easter. I add a little more sugar in the topping as another reviewer noted.

    • Anonymous

    • Seattle, WA

    • 4/7/2021

  • Recipe worked out fine. The coconut oi did the trick and yes the Greek Yogurt adds a good tang. Bravo

    • Bran Cobb

    • Austin Texas

    • 3/12/2021

  • My dinner party guests and I all agreed that this is the best Key Lime pie we ever tasted! I did have some problems with the recipe however. Here are my notes after first making of the recipe: 1. Filling and crust quantity required a 10” pie dish. 2. Crust was very crumbly; perhaps more shortening would help—or a regular dough crust incorporating very fine graham cracker crumbs. 3. After 30 minutes of baking the filling never stopped jiggling. It did firm up somewhat after refrigeration. 4. It took forever to juice all those little limes! The flavor difference is hardly worth the effort (at least to my taste buds) and key limes can be hard to find.

    • barrylockard

    • Sarasota, FL

    • 8/1/2020

  • This one didn't work out for me. Once in the oven, my pie never got to a point where the filling stopped jiggling, per the recipe instructions. Since it continued to jiggle, I kept it in longer than I ought to have, hoping it would set as described; it puffed up unattractively about a half inch above the crust and developed a slightly browned skin. The pie tasted good, so points there, but the filling was indeed quite loose and made for a messy pie.

    • Anonymous

    • Los Angeles

    • 7/5/2020

  • Really good recipe and very easy to put together. Added some shredded coconut and pecans to the crust and topped with toasted coconut instead of whipped cream; turned out great.

    • Anonymous

    • 4/23/2020

  • Delicious! The filling is both intensely tart and very sweet - which I love! I preferred the whipped topping a little sweeter, so I just added more powdered sugar to taste. I agree with the review below that using a food processor is the way to go, since you get more cohesive crust.

    • Anonymous

    • New York

    • 4/22/2020

  • Why use whipped cream when you can use a meringue. Honest question because I don't like egg white omelets and I don't know what else to use the egg whites for.

    • Anonymous

    • 4/17/2020

  • This was a great recipe! Didn't know what type of pie pan to use so I used metal and it worked fine.

    • Katiehwalsh

    • Austin

    • 4/5/2020

  • This was an awesome and easy recipe. I don't really recommend crushing the graham crackers by hand though - it took longer than expected and the large pieces made for a slightly crumbly crust. Next time I'll blitz in the food processor. Other than that it was perfect!!

    • Anonymous

    • nashville

    • 7/24/2019