“I hope someday somebody wants to hold you for 20 minutes straight and that’s all they do.
They don’t pull away. They don’t look at your face. They don’t try to kiss you.
All they do is wrap you up in their arms and hold on tight, without an ounce of selfishness to it.”

—Jenna Hunterson, Waitress

For a fleeting year when I was a kid, there was a store down near Ithaca Grain and Pet Supply called Pie Girl.
My dad and I would go there and pick up a pie whenever we had the chance. Our favorites were the key lime pie and the banana cream pie. Lime wins hands down for me, every time, then and now.
It’s long been shut down, but we still reminisce frequently about that little shop. I can picture quite clearly the buttery, crumbly cracker crust of the key lime—they were sparing in their whipped cream adornment. I can feel how the banana cream pie’s crust, with wide crimps, would get a little stodgy after a night in the fridge.
Between Pie Girl and Waitress, which remains an all-time fav, I’ve long been infatuated with retro, diner-style pies.

The last time I made a key lime pie, I nearly amputated my left index fingertip in a clichéd immersion blender accident. (Stuck my finger in to have a teeny taste and my right hand rebelled and turned the stupid thing to high.)
I still sport the thin, spider web of scars, though the weird paresthesias are gone. I’m not going to link that post now, because it was from a more ~awkward~ time of my life, but I will note that the title was “Worth It.”
That’s literally how much I love key lime pie.

Alas, there were no key limes to be found in New York City at the time of the making of this particular pie.
I looked through 3 stores and still came up empty handed.
Still, regular ole limes make a mouth wateringly sharp and tangy pie, especially in a bed of salty-sweet coconut shortbread and graham cracker crust. This pie is crowned with barely sweetened, lime-jelly stabilized whipped cream and shards of coconut.
Going to the extra trouble of using a pectin jelly to stabilize the whipped cream allows the pie to hold up extremely well fully decorated in the fridge overnight, but it’s not strictly necessary.

Stressed-out-about-surgery pie: bake a lime pie, then spend an hour meticulously decorating it with tweezers while memorizing 42 digits of pi instead of studying… 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419717…

P.S. I am wilfully ignoring the fact that exactly 1 year ago today, I left NYC as the pandemic ramped up. It makes me itchy with anxiety to think about it as such an un-abstracted period of time so I’m just going to try my best not to think too hard about that.

Pi day, previously:
2020: toasted black sesame pie
2019: black bottom cherry pie
2018: brown butter smoked salted honey pie
2017: vegan campfire pie
2016: brûléed citrus and lime pie

Pie, previously:
2018: plum and frangipane pie
2017: perfect peach pie
2016: pumpkin meringue tart
2015: apple, pear, butterscotch, and cheddar pie
2015: fig, rosemary, and lemon tart
2014: coconut buttermilk chess pie
2014: peach slab pie
2014: American pie
2013: Pumpkin spice brown butter chocolate pecan pie

Lime and Coconut Pie
makes 1 9-inch pie

ingredients:
for the coconut shortbread:
113 grams (1/2 cup) butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
100 grams (1/2 cup) sugar
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
180 grams (1 1/2 cups) flour
finely shredded unsweetened coconut, to roll

for the crust:
1/3 recipe coconut shortbread, from above (start with pulsing about 1/3 of the batch and set aside the crumbs; you may need more or less)
100 grams (1 cup, about 7 sheets of crackers) graham cracker crumbs
1 teaspoon salt
50 grams (1/4 cup) sugar
1/4 cup shredded coconut
70 grams (5 tablespoons) butter, melted
1 tablespoon heavy cream, as needed

for the pie:
780 grams (28 ounces, 2×14 ounce can) sweetened condensed milk
240 grams (1 cup) lime juice
4 egg yolks
1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

for the whipped cream:
120 grams (1/2 cup) lime juice
120 grams (1/2 cup) water
1 1/2 teaspoons calcium water (follow instructions on Pomona’s packaging)
300 grams (1 1/2 cups) sugar
2 teaspoons Pomona’s pectin

480 grams (2 cups) heavy whipping cream
1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar

directions:
Make the cookies: preheat oven to 350 and prepare a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Beat butter, salt, and sugar on high until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes.
Add the egg yolk and vanilla extract and stir to combine.
Add the flour and mix on low until the dough is homogeneous.
Sprinkle work surface with shredded coconut and flour and roll out thinly.
Cut shapes as desired.
Bake for 8-9 minutes, until toasted and golden (but beware of burning because the coconut can turn quickly).

Make the crust: crush coconut cookies into crumbs in a food processor.
Measure out roughly 1/2-3/4 cup and set the remainder aside (or blitz more, if you need it).
Next, crush the graham crackers in the food processor.
Measure out 1 cup of the graham cracker crumbs and stir together with cookie crumbs.
Add the salt and sugar and shredded coconut and stir to combine.
Pour in the butter and stir well; the mixture should be crumbly but hold together when packed.
If your mixture is too buttery, add a few tablespoons of cookie crumbs and 1 tablespoon of sugar and stir.
If your mixture is too dry, start with 1 tablespoon of heavy cream and stir to combine; you can add up to 3 tablespoons of cream as needed).
Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes, until fragrant and beginning to brown.

Make the filling: whisk all filling ingredients together.
Pour into still-warm pie crust and bake for 30-45 minutes, until the center just barely jiggles when you shake it.
Allow to cool completely.

Make the lime jelly: stir the lime juice, water, and calcium water in a pot and bring to a boil over medium heat.
Meanwhile, whisk sugar and pectin together.
Once the juice is boiling, add the sugar and stir for 1-2 minutes, until dissolved.
When the jelly thickens and comes back to a boil, remove from heat and let cool completely.
Measure out 1 1/2 tablespoon of the jelly and whisk it into the whipped cream.
Whip until soft peaks form, then sift in the powdered sugar.
Whip on high until stiff peaks form.
Pipe onto pie as desired!

Cosine, secant, tangent, sine,
Three point one four one five nine,
Square root, cube root, BTU,
Sequence, series, limits too.
Themistocles, Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War,
X squared, Y squared, H2SO4.
Who for? What for? Who we gonna yell for?
Go, Maroons.
Logarithm, biorhythm, entropy, kinetics,
MPC, GNP, bioenergetics!
Maximize and integrate, titrate and equilibrate—
Go, Maroons.

—Very Unofficial UChicago football cheer, or whatever