Creamy dreamy vegan key lime pie! This deliciously lime flavored pie has a perfect mousse texture and is wonderfully sweet and tart at the same time.
I’ve been wanting to make a vegan key lime pie forever. The thing that was holding me back? I didn’t know what kind of key lime pie I wanted to make.
Was I going to do something like avocado and key lime juice for a lovely raw vegan version? Was I going to do a baked version? Something in-between?
In the end it was looking at what the ‘regular’ version of key lime pie actually is that was the deciding factor.
A regular non-vegan key lime pie uses condensed milk, key lime juice and zest and egg yolks for the filling.
So I decided to just do an adaptation of the ‘original’.
And by the way if you love key lime flavor then check out our vegan key lime cake and vegan key lime cupcakes too. You’ll also love our vegan lemon pie.
How To Make Vegan Key Lime Pie
You will find full instructions and measurements in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. This is a summary of the process to go along with the process photos.
For our vegan version we used vegan condensed milk, whipped coconut cream and lime juice and zest.
The crust can either be made with vegan graham crackers or vegan digestive biscuits, it depends where you are in the world as to what would be easier to get. And if you can’t get either of those then use any vegan cookie you like.
I baked the crust, just for 10 minutes at 350°F. I wanted to make the crust very firm and baking it is a good way to ensure that it is. You don’t have to bake it though, if you’re happy with a slightly more crumbly texture to the crust then you can skip that step.
Then you simply add lime juice, lime extract and lime zest to a bowl with the vegan condensed milk and whisk together. Fold in the vegan whipped cream. Pour the lime filling over your crust and smooth it down.
Place it into the fridge for a few hours to set. Then top with lime zest and serve.
Recipe Success Tips
The main trick to getting this vegan key lime pie perfect is to make sure your whipped coconut cream is very very firm when whipped. If it is not, then add in ¼ – ½ tsp of xantham gum to get it nice and firm.
You also want to let your vegan condensed milk cool in the fridge after making it so that it gets nice and thick. If you’re using a store-bought variety of vegan condensed milk then this won’t apply, but if you’re making your own, let it cool and thicken in the fridge first.
And then you have to make sure that the pie has enough time to set properly before you slice and enjoy!
It is supposed to be nice and firm, with a mousse-like texture but still, pretty firm! It is supposed to hold up nicely when you slice it. If it’s not doing that then let it set for longer. You can speed things up by putting it in the freezer, just don’t forget it in there, or you’ll need to have patience again while it thaws.
Ingredient Notes
Lime extract. For extra key lime flavor you can use some lime extract but I have also tried this without lime extract and the flavor is still amazing, so that’s an optional extra.
Key limes vs regular limes. When it comes to key limes vs limes, you can use either/or. So whatever is easiest to get hold of, it won’t make a significant difference to your end result. To be more ‘traditional’ use key limes, but really no worries at all if you use regular limes.
Storing and Freezing
Keep it covered in the coldest part of your fridge and enjoy within 5 days. It is also freezer friendly, just let it thaw in the fridge when you’re ready for it.
More Vegan Pies
- Vegan Lemon Pie
- Vegan Chocolate Pie
- Vegan Chocolate Tart
- Vegan Peanut Butter Pie
- Vegan Coconut Cream Pie
- Vegan Banana Cream Pie
Did you make this recipe? Be sure to leave a comment and rating below!
Vegan Key Lime Pie
Ingredients
Crust:
- 10.5 ounces Vegan Digestive Biscuits (300g) or Vegan Graham Crackers
- ½ cup Vegan Butter (112g) Melted
Filling:
- 1 ½ cups Vegan Condensed Milk (360ml)
- ½ cup Key Lime Juice (120ml) freshly squeezed, or sub regular lime juice
- ½ teaspoon Lime Extract optional
- 2 Tablespoons Lime Zest
- 2 ½ cups Canned Coconut Cream (600ml) hardened cream only from 2 (14-ounce) cans, chilled overnight in the fridge*
- ¼ – ½ teaspoon Xantham Gum if needed
Topping:
- Lime Zest
Instructions
- Spray a 9 inch round pie dish with non-stick spray and set aside. Preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).
- Add the vegan digestives or graham crackers to the food processor and process into crumbles. Melt the vegan butter and mix in with the cookie crumbles and then place into the prepared pie dish and pat down firmly. Use the bottom of a measuring cup to press down firmly along the bottom and work the crust up along the sides.
- Place the pie base into the oven and bake for 10 minutes. Remove from the oven and leave to cool.
- Pour your vegan condensed milk out into a bowl and place into the fridge to cool and thicken.
- Add the coconut cream (separated hardened cream at the top of 2 chilled cans) to the bowl of a stand mixer, leaving the watery parts behind. Starting at slow speed gradually increase speed until the cream is whipped. For best results in this recipe, you need the cream to be very firm and well whipped with stiff peaks. If yours is a bit on the softer side, add in a ¼ – ½ tsp of xantham gum and whip again. It will thicken fast.
- Squeeze the lime juice and grate the lime zest.
- Add the lime juice, lime extract and lime zest to the bowl with the condensed milk and whisk with a hand whisk to combine. Then fold in the whipped coconut cream.
- Pour this over the cooled crust and place into the fridge for a few hours to set. If you want to speed it up a bit then you can put it into the freezer, just don’t forget it in there or you’ll have to wait for it to thaw!
- Decorate with lime zest and serve.
Notes
- The crust is made with approximately 26 Vegan Digestives or 20 Graham Cracker Sheets. It would be most accurate to go by weight since different brands have different size cookies.
- We used one full batch of our homemade vegan condensed milk. If you want to make it from scratch using our recipe then make it using soy milk or rice milk powder so that it’s nice and thick for using in this pie. You can also use store-bought vegan condensed milk.
- If you want to use a different vegan whipping cream then the amount to use would be 2 ½ cups before whipping. Very light and airy vegan whipping creams may not work great as the pie may not set properly.
- The filling for this pie is gluten-free, so if you wanted to make the whole pie gluten-free you could switch for a gluten-free cookie for the crust.
Oh, wow. This dessert was the bomb. SO DELICIOUS. I really recommend it – nice and tart, great texture, and also sweet. My entire family loved it. Thank you Alison!
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Awesome! Thanks so much Salome!
I am making this delicious looking Key Lime Pie this weekend, and I’m wondering – how many limes should I buy?
Thank you!
Hi Salome, I would guess at least 4, so get 6 to be on the safe side. 🙂
Thank you very much! Also, I have one more question – will the use of regular limes instead of key limes change the flavor or quality of the pie?
Thank you!
No not at all! It will be just fine.
Hi Alison,
I happen to have several cans of sweetened condensed coconut milk I’d like to use instead of making my own. Have you tried this, and if so, which brands do you find work best? The brand I have is Nature’s Greatest Foods. I have found that it’s a bit runny compared to actual condensed milk, but I have successfully thickened it using another tip I found for heating it in the microwave at a low power for a few minutes. Would love to know if you have experimented with canned sweetened condensed milk at all in this recipe. Thank you!
Hi Susen, I haven’t tried it in this recipe but I have for other recipes (the only brand I’ve tried is Nature’s Charm) and usually it works pretty much the same way. The main thing is to get your vegan cream really nice and firm. Use the xantham gum if you need to to make it nice and thick. In that case it should set nicely no matter what brand you use.
Hi Alison, looking to make this for my vegan desert on Christmas Day – just wondering how deep your Pie dish is? I have a 9inch tart tin that i always use for my chocolate tarts, but wondering if the filling will be too much? Your pie slices look much deeper than my pie tin..
Ours isn’t super deep, it’s just about 1 and 1/2 inches deep so as long as it’s in that region it should be fine. 🙂
Made this for a birthday and it went down very well, I made the condensed milk the day before and left in the fridge overnight. the pie itself I put in the freezer for 2 hours and then put in fridge and it turned out perfect thank you for an amazing recipe.
Awesome! Thanks Cazzie!
Is there any way to incorporate Avacado into this pie? I would love to for the health benefits as this is one of my favorite deserts!
I think you could! It’s not something I’ve tried but I think it could work. 🙂
I added the avocado and it was wonderful!
A question about the coconut cream: Do you mean the cans actually labeled as “coconut cream”? If so are you using the sweetened or non-sweetened version. If not, are you referring to taking regular cans of full fat coconut milk, putting that in the fridge and removing the hardened cream?
Hi Kristen, it’s cans of coconut cream, unsweetened.
Hi Alison!
I’ve made regular key lime pie for every familiy member so far except for my parents, mainly because my mother has to avoid sugar, and I could never enjoy it with them because of a milk allergy. I found your recipe last week and I was thrilled to see that there was a sugar- and milk-free alternative to both the pie and to sweetened condensed milk!
I only had two minor challenges – I couldn’t find sugar-free soy milk powder in-store here in South Africa and one of my two cans of coconut cream didn’t separate! So I made the condensed milk the classic way – simmering milk (coconut milk) and sugar (stevia) together for what seemed like an eternity. It didn’t come out as thick as I imagined your condensed milk to be, even after it stood in the fridge overnight. And then my fix for the coconut cream was, I whipped the one can that did separate, kept it to one side, then whipped the un-separated one with the xantam gum. It gave it a very gelatinous texture, but it mixed surprisingly well with the thoroughly-whipped coconut cream from the first can. I think the xantam gum helped keep the pie together after my condensed milk didn’t thicken enough. All-in-all it was a fairly easy pie to make and I learned a lot from making it.
The pie ended up being very light and very rich. My husband still prefers the regular version (with store-bought sweetened condensed milk) only because it’s got a fuller texture, but everyone loved it: So much so that my mother wanted the recipe! This is by far my favourite key lime pie xx
So glad it worked out well! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Hi! I don’t have canned coconut cream in our village shop but here in Finland we have many brands of oat cream that produces a nice thick whip and I would love to try that. Can you estimate how much I should use that? I have no idea how much of the thick white stuff is in those coconut cream cans…thanks????!
Hi Sanna, it would equal two cups of cream, you usually get at least a cup of cream from each chilled can of coconut cream. All the best! 🙂
I made this pie and it was delicious, however, it came with some challenges. I was not able to find canned coconut creme locally. The closest I could come up with was the coconut cream used to make pina coladas, which is available in liquor stores. It is very smooth and creamy, and comes in a large squeeze bottle. It absolutely does not whip, even though I tried with my KitchenAid mixer.
I made the recommended vegan condensed milk per the recipe. I purchased powdered soy milk online, and followed the recipe exactly. It made a large amount, and I believe it did say to use the whole recipe, which I did. It was very thick and gelatinous. Per the recipe, I added additional hot water, a LOT of additional water, almost a whole cup extra. It got even more thick while sitting out. I used a hand blender to make it creamy before combining with the coconut cream. (which had not whipped up at all)
I wanted the taste of Key Limes, so I used bottled Key Lime juice. I also added the lime extract. I used regular limes for the zest.
I did use 1/2 teaspoon of xanthan gum as I was fearful the mixture would not set up. I also added a small amount of green food coloring to give it a little bit more color.
I put the pie in the refrigerator, not the freezer. I was confused about this, as it did not seem to be a freezer pie recipe from the article, yet the actual recipe says to put it into the freezer.
The good news is that the pie DID set up after several hours in the fridge (about 6). It was delicious! I made it for my daughter, a vegan, and she was delighted. Before she was vegan, she used to love to make Key Lime pie. She had tried a Key Lime pie using avocado, and had one good experience and one bad. This pie was so pretty, and very tasty, everyone loved it, even the non-vegans!
I will try this recipe again when I can find coconut cream in a can, and also canned condensed milk.
Thank you for your hard work developing this treat!
Hi Sally, sorry to hear about the challenges in making this pie but I’m thrilled that it turned out well in the end and everyone enjoyed it! 🙂 Thanks for sharing and the feedback! 🙂
Hi made this but it seems that the condensed milk/ lime juice split when I added the whipped coconut cream. Any ideas ? Thanks
Oh no! Sorry to hear that happened. I haven’t had that happen before. The lime juice needs to be very well mixed in with the condensed milk and then the whipped coconut cream has to be very carefully folded in. If you did that then I’m not sure why it split!
This is fantastic 🙂 🙂 🙂
This looks amazing, I gave it a go and the taste was perfect but for some reason it wouldn’t set, I don’t know why but it tasted so good 🙂
Hi Holly, what a pity it didn’t want to set, did you put it in the freezer? So glad it tasted good though! 🙂
Being gluten free, it’s not easy to get delicious treats but this is such a fantastic lime pie!
Yes, as long as you use gluten-free cookies for the crust this can be a delicious gf dessert. 🙂
Hi! That sounds amazing & I will definitely make it as my non-vegan mum loves key lime pie! Is cream of tartar a substitute for the xantham gum? Thanks for your reply!
Hi Tina, no cream of tartar is something different altogether. You may not necessarily need the xantham gum, if you have a good brand of coconut cream that you use for whipping. 🙂
What can I use instead of lime extract? I don’t think we get that in South Africa
Sorry… just saw in your tips section that I can omit the lime extract
Hi Abigail, yes, it’s a nice addition to the flavor but not crucial. 🙂