Stay Calm and Bake Pie, Episode 4: Key Lime

[Music]hi I’m Beth Howard and welcome toepisode 4 of stay calm and bake pie I’mthe author of this cookbook missAmerican Pie and I’m bringing you freepie lessons from here in southeast Iowaon our farm affectionately known asCamp Doug but if you add an H on the endits camp dough so we’ve already madeapple triple berry crumble and bananacream and today we’re gonna make keylime pie and key lime pie isn’t thechapter of my cookbook called pies tolift your spirits and I think being inlockdown this long I think we all coulduse a little raised spirits right nowtoday we have a special Baker for you asurprise guest I’m not doing the demoDoug is Tex a third-generation farmer heand his brother Dennis work nearly 8,000acres of land to spend their family forover a hundred yearshe spends his day because cows andhurting them to fresh grassand checking on them in the pastures[Music]and during calving season sometimes heeven has to give him father I nobodydoes this because I find the emptybottles in the sink when I moved here Ithought farmers went to Home Depot tobuy their fences not these guys theybuild their own they even cut down treesto make their own fence books deadplants seeds of corn soybeans wheat andmore and after the seeds grow heharvests themthe bales is on hey the old-fashionedway in square bales he doesn’t like tobe indoors even when he’s not farmingbut when the weather is bad you mightfind him in the kitchen making pie hegot his first pie lesson from me when Ilived in the American Gothic house andhe’s made quite a few pies since thenbut his style is different than minewhich is why I’m gonna be interruptingthe pilots in a couple of times to pointout the differences of how I would makethe pie compared to Doug but I just wantto add up front that his pie is gonnaturn out amazing and it’s gonna provethe point that it doesn’t matter whattools you use or what variation of youringredients you make your pie the wayyou want to make your pie you just findwhat works for you[Music]okay I can usually do this withoutconsulting the recipe book but just tomake sure fresh squeezed lime juice fouregg yolks one can of sweetened condensedmilk Key Lime is one of the easiest piesto make it’s just a few simpleingredients and if you don’t have thegraham crackers on hand try substitutingsaltines if you don’t have sweetenedcondensed milk you can make your ownit’s just milk butter sugar and vanillabut you have to stand over the stove andstir for about a half-hour so if you’reup for that at least there’s a way ifyou don’t have limes like but you havelemons that’s workable too so if youdon’t have the ingredients on hand don’tworry about it there are othersubstitutions and it can still be reallygood[Music]I’m going to get the butter ready so Ihave to chop it up and put it in amicrowave and one of the things I’mfamous for is just keeping it simple therecipe calls for seven tablespoons andyou won’t behold there’s eighttablespoons in a stick I just use awhole spoon it still turns out to be piecrust Doug is right about using theextra butter Extra Butter is always goodlast December B and I are in Californiavisiting friends and relatives and westopped for lunch at the blue Playboystrapthey had key lime pie on the menu thosesome of the best key lime pie we’d everhad so obviously he was kind ofinterested she started askingingredients it turns out we use the sameingredients she did so then it was justa matter of what we do different bigexperiment a little sense that I alsolearned when we went to the blue plateoyster right that the one thing they diddo differently than me was they used alot more butter in their graham crackercrust now punch up graham crackers theplastic bag is what I putgraham crackers and rolled with rollingI put about throw them in at a time rollthem it’s a ziplock bag but guess whatyou don’t need to close the ziplock justkeep them in the other end there arenine in a sleeve and I use eleven ittakes a little more than sleeping pillgraham crackers I just use one sleeve ofcrackers so that I don’t have to open asecond sleeve and then have theremaining crackers go stale and I putthem all in the bagat the same time and crush them and Ijust find it that say it’s a little bitof time I need them so they’re powderedup but still chunks so you can see whatit looks like sort of keep in mind thesehands are clean they’ve been washedthey’re farmer hands the calluses andnicks and whatnot and it can look fatalready they’ve been washedokay here’s our ball of crumbs and it’spowdered and thing looks like kind oflike Grape Nutshere’s butter it’s all melded no chunksnow don’t mix then let it soak into thegraham crackers a little bit okay ourpie dish dish I read my it rhymes offish tower in southern Iowapushed out against the edges and now forthe magic tool working around the edgesand to push down filled up to the topthis is a handy glass because it’ll comein handy later because after the pie isdone you have to wait for it to coolbefore you can put the whipped cream onso then you take this very same glassand put some ice cubes in it and alittle bit of good rum and you sit andwait so now we go back around again andtidy up key lime pie it calls for rumapple pie then yeah I’d recommendbourbon but with key lime pie there’s agood rum from Venezuela calleddiplomatic oh there’s also a good onefrom Barbados called bamboo it has a youcan smell banana when you take a sniffbut when you taste it it has a littlebit of a hint of butterscotch and ofcourse there’s Appleton’s estate fromJamaica get that cane molasses any ovenwould work fine while you’re waiting foryourour ovens a little funky so I learned it12 minutes[Music]but word about the lines you don’t haveto use key limes for key lime pie youcan just use regular limes well they’reactually called Persian limes if youwant to get technical but you know justlike the apples and everything else weuse for pie ingredients sizes vary theamount of juice that you’re going to getout of a line is going to vary and andit will tell you this also no offense topeople in Key West Florida but theselimes the right the regular limes theytaste just as good as Key Lime andthey’re a lot easier to find and they’rea lot easier to squeeze and it takesfewer Long’s to get that half a cup or3/4 of a cup of juice so don’t worryabout the lines just use whatever limesand in fact I did a taste test when Ispent a month in Key West Florida it’sactually where I spent time working onmy cookbook and and I did a taste testwith people that lived in Key West onthe key lime pie and they all picked thepie with the regular limes as theirfavoriteDoug uses a grater like this he says heuses it for stabilityI use this zester this is a tool made bya company called micro plane and it’sactually made presenting I prefer thisbut you don’t have to have the specialgadgets and as you can see this worksjust fine more than enough use the limezest not in the pie filling but just onthe top it just the phone is just alittle creamier that way maybe I make upfor it by using more lime juiceI love the lime zest he doesn’t put itin the custard but I do and I put a lotmore lime zest on top of mine so Iprobably would have used this wholething and if I want it more zest on mypie I can just sprinkle whatever is leftover on top of the whipped cream when Igo to eat my slice[Music]I just use this an old juicer I rememberas a kid mom always had an old glass onethat we use forever but lo and beholdthis lime squeezer is just the cat’smeow and you would think you put it inlike that because I’m fit really nice noyou put it face down so they can pushthat juice out[Music]look at that turns it inside outand they think I’m gonna quit that’s aplanetnow we’re gonna have to have Jimmyphonics or something to use this extraline now it’s time for eggs we need fouregg yolks[Music]what[Music]when he separated his egg yolks from theegg whites he just did it one-handed asyou saw in my banana cream pie demo Iput I throw that the egg back and forthbetween my hands and let the egg whiteslip through my fingersand he just puts the whole egg in thebowl and lifts it up and lets the eggwhite slip through his fingers and itworks so I’m not telling you my ways theright wayit’s missus kind of like like that hesaid she said this is just I wanted totell you the way I do it it’s just theway I do it and now we need an extrabowl because we need to save to whitesto mix withyoke one to break sonever works perfect a little yoke leftwith the light rinse my hands off okaysweetened condensed milk home juice I’vejust added the lime juice and now I’mgoing to add the sweetened condensedmilk now this is the trick this stuff issticky and never likes to come out verywell and do it without cutting yourfingers on the edge don’t waste any heynow it’s time to mix playing videostogether I don’t know why he’s usingthis tiny little thing this is thepicture I used for the ice water oh nomaking pie dough I would use thepeephole but that’s just me[Music]all right he’s mixing his eggs with thisthing which to me is overkill I wouldjust use this actually the first time Idid this it was a little hand crankmixer electric mixer is quite animprovement now I’m going to fluff upthe egg whites two egg whites you don’teven have to use the egg whites at allbut if you are gonna use them you getthe eggs so fluffy that you like youwant to fold it in to the egg yolksbecause it really gives it some liftmix a little more Doug doesn’t do itthat way he just mixes them and thenthrows them in with the rest and I’mlike ain’t you know what it works butagain optional you can do no egg whitesat all and just do the egg yolks[Music]it’s jiggly see how custard yet we’llgive it I think the next three and ahalf minutes or so see the nice divotwhere the oven thermometer fell off therack and landed in the pie so that’sjust one of the minor dangers they’retrying to get it right two main toolsanyway now it’s cool enough that I canpick it up so it’s time to go in thefridgenow the hard part sit down and wait solet’s grab a couple ice cubesand here is that fancy tool for grahamcracker crust presser and we will findthis wonderful Venezuelan rum[Music]cheers to baking pie[Music]I’m gonna make whipped cream with sugarand whipping cream three tablespoons andfor the whipped cream what how can youmake whipped cream in this dinky littlething again I would use the pit bull I’mnot using a small mixing bowl I’m usingjust the right size it’s much handierthan a bigger mixing bowl[Music]whip cream on topalthough I really love whipping creamwhen we’re kids growing up we call itcotton salad cuz we just eat it plainsomething about if you put too much onit’s the wrong ratio so I don’t use itall now we add a little lime zest on topthat I saved from the limes earlier itgives a little zest it also just gives alittle more color on the top just tryand sprinkle it onlook at that the results I think aren’tgonna be that we covered up the littlestar that we made when we drop the oventhermometer it looks pretty good now thetaste test[Music]to mail in the brain anythingit’s snack time bedtime snack mm-hmm hasa nice little bit of a Tang from the thelime flavor so I think we hit her[Music]there’s less room for guys in thekitchen to make a little space for mylet them do their thing so thank you foryour timegood luck making pie everyone[Music]everyone smile these little thingsLongway so let’s make a little somethinghere to eat todaythere’s nothing like a piece of homemade[Music]love and care go ahead[Music]not as easy as digging about here’s yourguru here is you guys come on over tobest sounds to step inthe taste is fruit and some flour it’spretty quick it’ll take about an hour apinch of this and a shake of that youmade a masterpiece