I know that there have to be people like me out there who aren’t always looking for the shortcut, quick-eats version of every food. This recipe for the BEST Key Lime Pie Ice Cream is for my people! You get what you put in. In the case of this ice cream recipe, time equals flavor. Put some love in it, and enjoy the process!
I personally enjoy a challenge in the kitchen. I like pushing recipes to new extremes or making Frankenstein creations by pulling multiple recipes together to suit my needs and creative vision. This Key Lime Pie Ice Cream recipe definitely takes time. However, after trying to make multiple variations of Key Lime Pie Ice Cream, I’d say this is the BEST Key Lime Pie Ice Cream out there.
And hey, don’t let this introduction intimidate you! It is a fairly easy recipe to make, all things considered. It’s just time-consuming, so I typically spread out the process over a couple of days. I toasted sugar on one day, made shortbread and curd a few days later. Then I made the Key Lime Pie Ice Cream the following day. It’s super manageable this way, as I tend to work pretty slowly in the kitchen.
Key Lime Pie Ice Cream Recipe Remix
It involves adaptation and adjustments to 4 different recipes:
Toasted Sugar Recipe–Stella Parks, Serious Eats
Best Traditional Scotch Shortbread Recipe–Kathleen Pope, The Fresh Cooky
Easy Key Lime Curd Recipe–Cooking LSL
Lemon Icebox Pie Ice Cream–Food52
Just some important key notes so that you can learn from my mistakes:
READ THIS
With the Toasted Sugar (while this is optional, I absolutely feel that it made a wildly impressive flavor enhancement to my recipe that I wouldn’t go without in the future), read my entry How to Ruin 8 Hours of Work (and Carry On). Perfecting toasted sugar without a convection oven is going to take me some time and experimentation. This is definitely a process and requires some time commitment if you have a conventional oven that heats unevenly. There’s some trial and error involved. You can also check out Serious Eats and read about quick-toasted sugar as an alternative.
I use the toasted sugar and brown butter for the Scotch shortbread. Bear in mind, going the brown butter route that once the butter is browned, you need to let it cool to room temperature till it’s opaque and solid before creaming it with sugar. It is sublimely fluffy and deliciously aromatic when the sugar and butter mix. Well worth the extra steps for the nutty and caramel flavors that come out after baking.
If you want to save yourself a lot of time with the Easy Key Lime Curd Recipe (since I only make curd once a year and didn’t remember this before hand…and it doesn’t specify this on the recipe I used), READ and REMEMBER this CRUCIAL bit of information. It is thick enough when it coats the back of a wooden spoon (or other analogous kitchen utensil). I probably spent 20 minutes longer over the stove than I actually needed to…
Some Things to Note
If you do like I do and double the recipes, expect that it will take longer for cooking time. Also, even though I usually double all of my recipes (I’ll keep the single batch ratios for this Key Lime Pie Ice Cream recipe, though), I ALWAYS at least double certain things like seasoning, herbs, zest. I find that recipes tend to be SUPER conservative with incorporations like cinnamon or in the case of these recipes, key lime zest. I want to taste a FLAVOR PUNCH!
Make sure you’re familiar with the manufacturer’s operating instructions for your ice cream maker. I use a motorized old-fashioned ice cream machine (with salt and ice) and learned (after erroneously over-churning ice cream one year) that it only takes my machine, on average 30-45 minutes to get to the perfect churned consistency. Too long, and it’s like a disappointing, frozen cool-whip kind of texture, not the creamy, coat-the-roof-of-your-mouth, decadence that perfect homemade ice cream should be.
Without further ado, this is my recipe for the BEST Key Lime Pie Ice Cream:
The BEST Key Lime Pie Ice Cream Recipe
Equipment
- 1 Ice Cream Maker
Ingredients
Toasted Sugar
- 9 cups Granulated Sugar For Toasting
Toasted Sugar Browned Butter Scotch Shortbread
- 1 cup Unsalted Butter (2 Sticks)
- ½ cup Toasted Sugar
- 1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
- 2 cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour
- ¼ cup Cornstarch
- ⅛ tsp Kosher Salt
- Sanding Sugar (Optional)
Tangy Key Lime Curd
- 5 Egg Yolks
- ¾ cup Granulated Sugar
- 2-3 tsp Key Lime Zest
- ½ cup Key Lime Juice
- ⅛ tsp Kosher Salt
- 4 tbsp Unsalted Butter (Cubed)
BEST Key Lime Pie Ice Cream
- 1 cup Whole Milk
- 2 cup Heavy Whipping Cream
- ⅓ cup Toasted Sugar
- ½ tsp Kosher Salt
- 1 cup Tangy Key Lime Curd
- Scotch Shortbread (Add as much or as little as you like! Entirely up to your preference.)
Instructions
Toasted Sugar
- Toast the Sugar!
- The recommendation from Serious Eats is to toast about 4 lbs (or 9 cups) of granulated sugar in a glass baking dish at 300F for roughly 5 hours. That’s assuming you have a convection oven; otherwise, as I mentioned, this may be a trial-and-error pursuit that takes longer. The flavor pay off is absolutely worth it, so here are my troubleshooting methods for making this work:9 cups Granulated Sugar For Toasting
- Temperature adjustment: Using my oven thermometer, it was obvious pretty early on that my oven heats unevenly. Ultimately, I settled on actually bumping the temp up to about 315-325F.
- Spread out the sugar between two glass dishes to thin it/toast it faster.
- I don’t recommend having the baking rack lower than the middle of the oven. Too close to the heating coils, it’s going to liquefy before you know it. It happens fast if it gets too hot, too quickly.
- Sometimes the kitchen lighting can make it difficult to tell if you’re making any progress with sugar-toasting; it can help if you hold a spoon of untoasted sugar next to the dish of sugar from the oven to see any difference.
- After the first hour that the sugar has been in the oven, gently stir the sugar in the dish. This is to help circulate the warmer sugar from the edges and bottom of the dish and the cooler sugar from the top and middle of the dish so that it can toast evenly. It also helps release steam and moisture from the sugar to help prevent it from actually liquefying. From this point forward, you’ll want to stir the sugar like so every 30 minutes until it reaches the desired color and level of toasting.
- The longer the sugar toasts, it will eventually begin to look more like golden, light brown sugar. It also tends to clump as moisture is released, and you can end up with hard, crystallized clumps of sugar. This is fine, as once it’s cooled, you can blitz it in a food processor. I actually use a Ninja blender cup and pulse it intermittently about 8 times or so. If you blend it instead of pulsing it, it will be more like a powdered sugar consistency (but still super yummy).
Toasted Sugar Browned Butter Scotch Shortbread
- Bake the Shortbread!
- Start by browning the butter. In a skillet over medium to med-high heat, melt the butter down, and stir it gently, but constantly, to ensure that it doesn’t burn. Watch carefully, since as the butter darkens, it can quickly cross the line from browned to burnt if you aren’t paying attention. The fat solids from the butter will separate and start from a pale yellow, shift to gold, and finally get to a nice, dark brown and smell nutty. Remove from heat, allow to cool for a few minutes, pour into a stand-mixer stainless steel mixing bowl and finish cooling to room temperature. The brown butter, as it cools, will become opaque and solidify. This can take a couple of hours before it’s completely cool and solid.1 cup Unsalted Butter (2 Sticks)
- Beat the butter with a paddle attachment at medium speed for a few moments. It’ll already be fairly creamy and soft. Add in your toasted sugar and beat well for 2-3 minutes. The smell will be AMAZING, and the mixture will be so light and fluffy. Stir in the pure vanilla extract.½ cup Toasted Sugar, 1 tsp Pure Vanilla Extract
- In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, cornstarch, and salt. Slowly add this dry ingredient mix into the butter mixture and beat at low speed. It will be a soft, almost airy, light dough. (I attempted to knead this dough a few times on a floured counter, but it didn’t feel necessary–the consistency just felt unreal and perfect as it was).2 cups Unbleached All-Purpose Flour, ¼ cup Cornstarch, ⅛ tsp Kosher Salt
- Press dough into an ungreased, parchment-paper lined pan. Since I doubled the recipe, I used a large cookie sheet; however, for a single batch, you should be able to use a 9×9 pan. Press out the dough evenly till it reaches all corners and edges and is generally the same thickness throughout. Prick the dough with a fork at regular 1” intervals (this helps to prevent cracking/bubbling during the baking process). Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the fridge for at least 2 hours (as soft as the dough feels, chilling in the fridge will firm the fat from the butter and harden it back up so that it will be more crispy and mix into the ice cream better after baking).
- Preheat oven to 325F. At this point, if desired, you can sprinkle the shortbread dough with sanding sugar before baking. Bake for 35 minutes, until it’s lightly golden at the edges. I actually don’t mind even letting it bake a couple minutes longer, within reason, to allow it to dry out just a little more. Crunchier texture for the ice cream! Allow to cool completely; I store it back in the fridge, covered, until I’m ready to add it into the ice cream base.Sanding Sugar (Optional)
Tangy Key Lime Curd
- Cook the Curd!
- I recommend prepping your key lime juice and zest before putting the curd together. Key limes are tiny and it takes a lot of them and a bit of time to get ½ cup of juice and upwards of 1 T of lime zest, depending on how tangy you like your curd (I like a nice, zingy, citrus bite–and the zest is aesthetically pleasing in the ice cream also). Alternatively, you can use regular limes, but it’s definitely not my preference.2-3 tsp Key Lime Zest, ½ cup Key Lime Juice
- In a heatproof bowl, whisk egg yolks, sugar, key lime juice and zest, and salt until well combined.5 Egg Yolks, ¾ cup Granulated Sugar, ⅛ tsp Kosher Salt
- I don’t own a double-boiler, so I just use a saucepan over medium heat, wait for the water to get hot, then place the heatproof bowl over the saucepan. Whisk the key lime mixture constantly until thickened. You’ll know it’s thick enough when it coats the back of a spoon.
- Remove the curd from the heat. Drop in the cubes of butter and stir the mixture until the butter is completely melted. Let it cool to room temperature. Cover with plastic wrap, but let the plastic wrap actually touch the surface of the curd. This will help prevent any skin from forming as it further cools and sets up in the refrigerator.4 tbsp Unsalted Butter (Cubed)
Best Key Lime Pie Icecream
- Churn Some Ice Cream!
- For the ice cream base, mix milk, heavy whipping cream, toasted sugar, and salt in a medium saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium to med-high heat. You want to make sure that the sugar is fully dissolved, but I like to make sure that it really gets hot and simmers enough for a light “skin” to start to form on the surface. Once it gets to this point, it has a nostalgic flavor that smacks of homemade stovetop vanilla pudding that is absolutely scrumptious. Remove from heat.1 cup Whole Milk, 2 cup Heavy Whipping Cream, ⅓ cup Toasted Sugar, ½ tsp Kosher Salt
- Let the saucepan cool over a bowl of ice water, and stir the ice cream base from time to time. Once it has cooled (room temp to still slightly warm), mix in your tangy key lime curd until smooth and well incorporated.1 cup Tangy Key Lime Curd
- Pour ice cream mixture into your ice cream maker and churn/process according to the manufacturer’s instructions. With my electric old-fashioned ice cream maker, I churn it for roughly 30 minutes.
- While it churns, break up the shortbread by putting it in a ziploc bag, pushing the air out before sealing, and using a rolling pin or meat tenderizer until it’s in ideal form. I like a decent mix of “sand” and “chunks” (I couldn’t think of a more appetizing description) of shortbread crumbles. Once the 30 minutes or so is up, add in your mix-ins to the ice cream and allow it to churn for about 5-10 minutes longer. You may want to add in the shortbread gradually to ensure that it doesn’t “gum up” the churning paddle. If it does, just mix it in with a spatula before replacing the paddle.Scotch Shortbread (Add as much or as little as you like! Entirely up to your preference.)
- Transfer the ice cream to an airtight container, like this, and freeze until firm, generally at least 4 hours. Bear in mind that when the ice cream freezes, it will expand in whatever container you store it in, so give it a little breathing room.
- ENJOY the BEST Key Lime Pie Ice Cream EVER!
