I have always loved that Becky’s and my birthdays are only two days apart. I especially love that hers comes before mine because that means she’ll always be older than me. (It’s the little things in life, you know?) Can I also tell you that I’m a little jealous that she came up with a chocolate raspberry dessert to make for her birthday? Her Dark Chocolate Chambord Mini Bundts are swoon-worthy, and that is one of my most favorite flavor combinations EVER.

Another one of my favorites? Chocolate and mint. So when I thought long and hard about what I wanted to make for my birthday dessert (because Bec and I suffer the same fate of being The Bakers in our households, and so all birthday baking comes down to us—even our own), I started day-dreaming about a Brownie Ice Cream cake made with mint chocolate chip ice cream. The first time I made it…oh, man, so good, but it was too rich. I had *thought* I had the right solution to that problem, but I gotta tell you that I had a bit of a birthday cake fail with my attempt.

Or, well, not exactly a fail, per se. It was delicious and my family was all happy moans and licking hot fudge sauce off of fingers as they ate it, but it didn’t turn out the way I wanted it to. Sigh. Big, disappointed, sad-birthday sigh. So, back to the pantry for more work with that recipe. It’ll have to be shared once I work out the kinks.

BUT, I do have The. Most. Amazing. Fresh. Lime. Pie recipe. When I stumbled across this recipe by Stella Parks over at Serious Eats, I just about got drool all over my keyboard. And I emailed Bec to complain that HOW was I supposed to choose just ONE dessert to make for my birthday when there was something like THIS out there begging me to make it, too? I mean, lime pie or mint chocolate brownie cake? In what world is that a fair choice to have to make?

She told me to make both. (There are so many reasons to love Bec, and this enabling of my sweet tooth/baking obsession is just one of them.) So I hemmed and hawed about which one to make for my birthday, came across a bag of limes on sale for less than $2 and took it as a sign that the lime pie was meant to be.

Oh my, was it meant to be. I realized I had the perfect excuse to make it right before my birthday—the Super Bowl. Every year we get together with good friends to watch the game over at their house. Well, some of us watch. The other of us hangs out in the kitchen the whole time, making way too much food, catching up, talking about anything and everything, and enjoying her dear friend’s company so much that an overblown football game that lasts for four hours doesn’t seem long enough and the evening is over too soon.

Ahem.

But this meant I could make both treats for my birthday, and who cares who won the game because I TOTALLY won this year.

This pie, you guys. It’s a time commitment and, sure, there are shortcuts you could take like using bottled lime juice and a store bought crust, and it would probably turn out pretty good…but it wouldn’t be phenomenal. And this pie—THIS pie—is celestial when made with fresh limes and homemade crust, in it’s very own stratosphere of Supreme Pie-dom.

This is the best pie I’ve ever made (and I’ve made a LOT of pies).

The original recipe called for meringue on top, making it a kind of creamy lime meringue pie, and while I’d originally planned to follow the recipe as written (an admittedly unusual thing for me to do), I veered off course when I came across a little note in the recipe about using the leftover juiced rinds to make a lime variation of the author’s fresh lemon syrup. Well, I thought, eyeing the pile of squeezed and zested limes, lime syrup sounded like a Very Good Idea. So I tossed them into a bowl, poured a cup of sugar on them, and let them sit while I went about making the rest of the pie.

Every time I went back to stir my little pile of rinds and watch the syrup magically appear in the bottom of the bowl as the sugar dissolved, I felt giddy. Lime syrup. What would I do with lime syrup? What wouldn’t I do with lime syrup? And that’s when I remembered one little note about uses in the lemon syrup recipe—that it could be used in place of sugar in whipped cream.

Whipped cream? I could put whipped cream on my intensely sweet-tart lime pie. I mean, I’m not a big meringue fan anyway, it’s just something that comes on top of a lemon meringue pie. Something to get through to get to the lemony goodness beneath. But I do so love whipped cream. Years ago, Bec gave me her Super Secret Chocolate Cream Pie recipe with a note that it could be topped with whipped cream but she didn’t do that because it was so fabulous on its own. But you know me, I totally had to pile whipped cream and chocolate curls on mine (I was feeling fancy that day), and it was chocolatey-creamy PERFECTION.

So, I thought, what could be better than a fresh lime pie topped with lime-infused whipped cream?

Turns out…NOTHING. Oh my god.

Because it is AMAZING. The hint of lime in the whipped cream blends beautifully with the intense lime of the custard filling, treating your taste buds to a serious lime party that has you closing your eyes, letting every bite dissolve slowly over your tongue so that you can savor every last speck. It may even have you licking your plate.

No one would judge you if you did. I mean, this pie. THIS PIE. I practically licked the pie plate when the last slice left it. (I may have whimpered a little, too.)

The custard filling is dreamy. As soon as I’d poured it into the pie crust, I took a little taste and then melted into a puddle of oh-my-god-that-is-incredible. I also had some moments of why-did-I-make-this-to-share-with-people and maybe-I’ll-accidentally-on-purpose-forget-it-at-home.

But I couldn’t not share this with some of my favorite people on Earth. Besides, this pie is meant to be shared (and oohed and ahhed over appropriately, of course—isn’t that what friends are for?) and it has sooooo much flavor that a small slice is more than enough to satisfy the sweetest of sweet tooths (sweet teeth?).

Plus, when you bring it over to a friend’s house to share and they help you with the styling (even going so far as to clean up that first slice of pie so it looks picture perfect, wiping any errant finger prints off the plate, and then finding a lamp to hold above the kitchen table so we could get a great shot), you get so much more than just a great slice of pie.

This pie brings people together, yo.

Make it for a holiday. Make it for a Monday. Make it for the fun of it. Whatever your reasons (real or imagined), just make it. You seriously won’t regret it.

Fresh Lime Pie with Lime-Kissed Whipped Cream

A creamy, sweet-tart, fresh lime pie topped with dreamy whipped cream that has a hint of lime.

Adapted from Serious Eats.

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Prep Time: 20 minutes minutes

Cook Time: 40 minutes minutes

Total Time: 1 hour hour

Course: Dessert

Servings: 1 9-inch pie

Ingredients

Volume - Weight

• 1 recipe pie crust--cookie, graham, whole wheat, white, or gluten free

Lime Syrup

• lime rinds from zested and juiced limes
• 1 cup granulated sugar

Filling

• 1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
• 1/3 cup + 1 tbsp cornstarch
• 1/4 tsp kosher salt (use half as much if using table salt)
• 4 large eggs
• 1 cup fresh lime juice (about 7-8 limes)
• 2 Tbsp fresh lime zest (about 4 limes)
• 2 cups milk, any percentage

Lime-Kissed Whipped Cream

• 1 1/2 cups heavy cream
• 1/3 cup lime syrup

Instructions

Prepare

• Get your pie crust ready. Prebake per recipe instructions. Let it cool while you make the syrup and filling.

Lime syrup

• Zest and juice the limes. Set aside for the filling.
  
• Toss the rinds into a non-reactive bowl and cover with a cup of sugar.
  
• Mix with a spoon every so often until the sugar is completely dissolved and you are left with sweet limey goodness.
  
• Strain the syrup through a fine mesh sieve, pressing the rinds with a ricer or cheesecloth to get out all the essential oils. Discard the rinds.
  
• Refrigerate in a glass canning jar or bottle. Will keep for up to 3 months.
  

Filling

• Mix together the sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a heavy 3-qt sauce pan. Add in eggs, lime juice, lime zest, and milk, whisking until smooth. Heat over medium-low flame for about 5 minutes, gently whisking until hot.
  
• Turn heat up to medium, continuing to whisk for about 3 more minutes as it thickens. When mixture comes to a boil, bubbles starting to appear at the edges, set a timer for 2 minutes and whisk until the timer goes off.
  
• Remove from heat. Pour mixture through a fine mesh sieve, helping it through with a spatula when necessary to get every last drop into your prepared pie crust. Let cool completely.

Lime-Kissed Whipped Cream

• Pour the cream and lime syrup into a bowl and whisk by hand, handmixer, or stand mixer until fluffy.
  
• (Alternatively, you can simply lightly sweeten the whipped cream with powdered sugar and whip.)

Finishing Touches

• Once pie has cooled, cover and refrigerate it for a couple of hours or overnight. Cover with whipped cream, then use a wet knife to cut. Leftovers will keep for up to 1 week in the refrigerator.