Vegan Key Lime Pie
I’ve never been a big fan of key lime pie, but my friend Ben’s girlfriend Deanna brought this vegan pie for dessert a few weeks ago, and I thought it was excellent. It has such a strong lime flavor, I couldn’t believe it only had 4 Tbs. of lime juice. After making lemon bars, I expected it to have about a cup! Deanna is a professional vegan baker, but she didn’t invent the recipe. In looking for the source of this recipe, I found it on the web, and the page said it was created by Jannequin Bennett, chef at the Jefferson Hotel.
Ingredients:
- two 8oz containers of Tofutti “Better Than Cream Cheese” (the kind with no hydrogenated oils) [my friend replaced 1/2 of one of the containers with an equal amount of silken tofu]
- 2 Tbs soy milk
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla
- 2 tsp grated lime peel
- 4 Tbs lime juice
- 2 Tbs corn starch
You need a 9″ pie crust. (My friend made a crust with graham crackers and Earth Balance margarine (no hydrogenated oils!)
Instructions:
- Preheat oven to 350
- Blend all ingredients in food processor
- Bake for 40 min
- Let it cool
- Refrigerate overnight
This pie makes about 10 good sized slices, each about 275 calories (including the crust). Without the crust it’s about 175 calories per slice.
My Notes
I forgot I had a pie pan, so made this pie in a round cookie pan. That was a bad idea. The taste was good but it was impossible to get out. I also didn’t refrigerate it long enough, and used only 1 tub of cream cheese. The pie didn’t stay together very well, but the flavor was still excellent. I asked Ben about it and it turns out he wrote corn syrup instead of corn starch, which was most likely a big part of the problem. I fixed the recipe above, but haven’t tried it again since.
My mom tried this recipe and she said she thought it was excellent, but a bit too sweet. She said she’s going to try it again using less “cream cheese” and more tofu. This recipe has a lot of potential. I’m sure the rating will go up shortly!
Rating: B+
The captious vegetarian 
dani said,
August 3, 2008 at 7:32 pm
YUM!!! I just made this pie, I used all tofutti cream cheese and no tofu and it isn’t too sweet, I think the extra keylime juice I added (little over 1/4 cup) balanced out the sweet. I would call it more of a key lime cheese cake, very delicious! Thanks for the recipe!
captious said,
September 11, 2008 at 6:44 am
A friend sent me this comment:
i made that key lime pie, but it really turned out 1) more like a cheesecake than any kind of chiffon/pudding consistency, which is how i usually think of key lime pies, and 2) more like a tart than a pie in any event, because i only had a shallow tart pan, but 3) really, really frogging good. I made it with an oat and buttery spread crust, b/c I had nothing else in the house from which to make an easy vegan crust, but it turned out quite well.
No wonder I like it when I don’t normally like key lime pie. It’s more like a cheesecake!
amanda said,
April 7, 2009 at 11:50 am
your blog is a C-, but it has a lot of potential. i’m sure the rating will go up if you start following recipes correctly before you grade them