Why key lime should be your go-to holiday pie
Plus my favorite recipe, Florida politics, false collective memories, and the disputed origins of the former official state pie of the Sunshine State.
Tis the season for baked goods and holiday parties. Now that Covid-19 has receded and people are willing to be around each other again, at least for short periods of time and then only if plied with copious amounts of alcohol, you may find yourself in need of a baking refresh.
If that’s the case, let me recommend a from-scratch key lime pie recipe that is sure to liven up any holiday gathering. Bonus: while everyone else is schlepping in their pecan and pumpkin pies, you’ll be grinning under the mistletoe with a cool, summer-y dessert offering that no one else had the foresight to bring.
As you can clearly see from this bar graph (why they didn’t make it a pie chart is beyond me), pumpkin pie is far and away the holiday favorite; at the other end of the spectrum, blueberry pie actually falls below the creeps who said “I do not eat pie,” probably right before being handcuffed to a steel gurney for a 24-hour psych observation.
I want to give you this recipe so you can try it out for yourself and take it to your next holiday gathering. I really do. But before I can do that, the time-honored conventions of internet recipe sharing and food writing to which I am honor-bound to uphold dictate that I first take you on a long-winded, self-indulgent detour through the history (both personal and gastronomical) of key lime pie, hereafter “KLP.”
Big Strawberry and the “Don’t Tread on Key Lime Pie” movement
Earlier this year, Florida governor Ron DeSantis signed a new law declaring strawberry shortcake the official dessert of the state of Florida. The move was intended to boost the state’s billion-dollar strawberry industry and placate Florida’s strawberry farmers. The signing occurred in March during a press conference in which a grinning DeSantis—taking a break from his usual hobbies of violating people’s Constitutional rights and discrediting Covid-19 vaccines—took a big bite of strawberry shortcake and gave the thumbs up sign.
On the surface, this would appear to be just another tone deaf photo-op.
But, like seemingly everything that happens in Florida, the move courted controversy, with the Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez taking to Twitter to express her displeasure over the move and whip up such delicious Tea Party-era sentiments like “Don’t Tread on Key Lime Pie.”
The problem, of course, as crusty detractors like Nuñez were quick to point out, is that strawberry shortcake is actually a British invention, which is a huge no-go in a place like Florida, a state that since 2016 has moved even further to the right and is therefore sharply skeptical of anything that smacks even lightly of effete European excess. KLP, on the other hand, is widely believed to be a homegrown delicacy, born right on the sandy beaches of Key West by sponge fisherman, and therefore as American as apple pie.
But is it?
Ask most Americans about the origins of KLP and they will likely tell you that it is a Florida dessert, from the Florida Keys. And of course this makes perfect sense in the same way that it makes perfect sense that comedian Sinbad played a genie in a movie from the early ‘90s called Shazaam. Except…that didn’t happen. It is widely believed to have happened—a phenomenon psychologists call collective false memory, or more informally, “The Mandela Effect”—but it simply didn’t happen. Sinbad never starred in such a movie, and, whether Floridians like to hear it or not, the origins of their beloved KLP are disputed.
The standard history has held that the dessert was created in Key West in the late-19th century. Traditional recipes use sweetened condensed milk “probably because fresh milk and refrigeration were uncommon in the isolated Florida Keys until the 1930s,” says the Encyclopedia Britannica in an unbridled bit of historical speculation. In fact, it is true that refrigeration and later air conditioning transformed Florida from a swampy, malaria-infested no man’s land to a place where billions of people from around the world queue up each year to dump the contents of their savings accounts, but that’s a different story for a different newsletter. What the Encyclopedia Brittanica article does state with authority is that key limes aren’t even grown in Florida on a commercial scale, despite KLP being the official state pie from 2006 until earlier this year when DeSantis dethroned it to curry favor with strawberry farmers. The vast majority of commercial key limes are actually grown in Mexico, this being an effect of NAFTA.
More recently, there has been some speculation that KLP was actually invented by the Borden milk company in an effort to sell more sweetened condensed milk. In a Food & Wine article from 2018, Elisabeth Sherman writes that, according to Stella Parks—a James Beard award winner who literally wrote the book on iconic American desserts—KLP was actually invented in a Borden test kitchen in the early 1930s. Naturally, this angered Floridians in general and especially one David Sloan, whose The Key West Key Lime Pie Cookbook tells a somewhat different story. According to Sloan, KLP dates back to the mid-nineteenth century and a cook named Aunt Sally who purportedly invented the dessert for her millionaire boss William Curry, himself an interesting player in early Florida history.
"Someone is trying to take away the Florida Keys' culture, and I am not going to stand for it," Sloan said in an interview with West Palm Beach’s WPTV in 2018. In the same interview, Sloan had the following to say on the origins of KLP, referring to Key Westers and denizens of “the Conch Republic” in a somewhat Biblical fashion as “people of the Keys”:
"The people of the Keys believe the first Key lime pie was invented by sponge fishermen who went out in their rafts for several days and took supplies," Sloan said. "We think that they took stale Cuban bread and moistened it up with sweetened condensed milk and then took wild bird eggs, squeezed some lime over it, let it sit in the sun and there you had the first Key lime pie."
Regardless of the actual truth of the matter, you can see how people like Sloan and others in Key West would want to maintain this narrative of KLP’s origins. It’s wrapped up in the all-consuming logic of authenticity. Who wants to believe that their region’s ethos-defining dessert was invented by some corporate flunky in a NYC test kitchen? And only then to be crassly marketed on cans of Borden sweetened condensed milk? It’s like finding out your close friend’s famous family recipe for seven-layer dip came off the Tostito’s bag. Whomp, whomp.
In the social media age, authenticity is the coin of the realm. Marketers sell authenticity to the masses in the form of products and experiences. (Want to explore nature authentically? You are going to need a $75,000 SUV for that, bud.) On social media itself, the elusive draw of authenticity and self-presentation keeps Big Tech churning out new features and platforms promising the authentic and “the real.” In recent years, an “anti-Instagram” trend has emerged, with apps like BeReal trafficking in the logic of authenticity to appeal to those who are fed up with the fakery and AI-enhanced features (such as the cyborgian “Instagram face”) rampant on sites like Instagram and TikTok. A recent article in Wired has it right in pointing out that the social constructed nature of these performative ideals predates the social media age:
In their endless one-upmanship, platform companies would do well to remember that the ideal they are flaunting—authenticity—is a social construct. And this idea well predates social networks. In the 1950s, sociologist Erving Goffman wrote that people want to put forward their best selves in any performative scenario, in-person or otherwise, to avoid social stigma. This means that pinning down your most “authentic” self is always-already elusive. Accordingly, marketers continue to offer it up, and on the cycle goes.
In the end, BeReal is unlikely to deracinate the social media culture of self-presentation, where production of the self is, as Alison Hearn put it, “purposeful and outer directed.” But at least it allows us to feign indifference in two-minute increments.
Researchers have tracked “social media fatigue” through the pandemic, noting the high rates of information overload during (and after) the pandemic, and suggesting that psychotherapeutic interventions and digital literacy programs are necessary to manage social media fatigue.
So to paraphrase the old quasi-philosophical adage, “If you make a key lime pie from scratch and don’t post it on Instagram, have you actually made it?” And if KLP doesn’t originate in breezy Key West—or even in Florida, for that matter—what does that do to change our perceptions of this nearly 100-year old dessert?
But all of that is just academic. In fact, my recipe for KLP avoids the whole sticky political mess concerned the pie’s origins and loses both the sweetened condensed milk and the eggs. Blasphemy? You be the judge of that, and be sure to let me know in the comments.
Also, if you do make this KLP and post a pic of it on Instagram, be sure to tag me. I need the cred points. (@paulgeecook).
The recipe: “Paul’s famous from-scratch KLP”
What I love about this recipe is that it’s just so easy to make, and it’s from scratch. You start with a nice shortbread crust, which is surprisingly easy to make. (Note: this version of KLP swaps out the eggs for creamy mascarpone cheese.)
Here’s what you need:
Software
3 ounces of cream cheese
4 ounces of mascarpone
2.5 ounces of confectioners’ sugar
10 ounces all-purpose flour
1 pound of key limes (nope, that leftover cache of regular limes from your last margarita night simply won’t work and, what’s more, you will violate all manner of copyrights if you try it)
5 ounces granulated sugar
6 tablespoons of butter (unsalted)
kosher salt
Hardware
small saucepan or skillet
pie dish (8- or 9-inches)
baking sheet (with holes)
medium-sized mixing bowl
First, preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit with a rack in the center. Then, melt 6 tablespoons (nearly an entire stick) of butter in a small saucepan or skillet over medium-low heat. While you’re doing all this, set the cream cheese and mascarpone out at room temperature so it can soften up a bit. (This will make it easier to work with.)
In a medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the confectioners’ sugar, 1 cup of all-purpose flour, and just a pinch of salt. Then, add in the melted butter and stir with a fork until everything is well combined and clumpy like that weird magnetic sand that kids seem to love so much.
Dump the contents of the mixing bowl into the pie pan (not deep dish, if you can help it) and hand press a nice crust. Be sure to bring the crust up onto the sides of the pan. Poke a few holes in the crust with a fork and then pop that sucker in the oven on the center rack for 20-25 minutes or until lightly golden. Pull it out of the oven and let it cool for a good half hour or so.
While the pie crust is baking or cooling, go ahead and make the custard filling. In your medium-sized mixing bowl, which you have already hand washed and dried (‘cuz you’re good like that), squeeze out 1/4 cup of key lime juice, taking care not to leave any seeds or pulp behind. Then add your softened cream cheese and mascarpone, granulated sugar, 1/4 cup flour, and a 1/2 teaspoon salt. Whisk ingredients together with a fork (or whisk, if you have one) until smooth. Then, gradually whisk in 3/4 cup of tap water until it’s combined. Over-whisking will result in air bubbles. Don’t worry that it’s soupy—that’s exactly how it should be.
Once your crust has fully cooled, fill it with your key lime custard. Then, carefully place the pie on the baking sheet and very carefully put the whole contraption onto the center rack.
Bake on the center oven rack for 30-35 minutes, and voila! You have a KLP. Cool it down in the refrigerator for at least a couple of hours so it’s nice and cold when you serve it. Slice up the remaining key limes and use as garnish, or save them for your next KLP because after sacrificing this one for your friends, or family, or the next door neighbor who cat sits for you, or the office party, you will definitely want to make another one that you can eat while watching the Season 2 finale of White Lotus.
I apologize if this sounds weirdly specific.
Enjoy! Merry Christmas! Let me know how your KLP turns out in the comments section below.
