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Easy No-Churn Key Lime Pie Ice Cream

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Recently, I’ve seen some pictures on my Instagram feed of a no-churn ice cream that uses condensed milk. I was curious to try this as an easy summertime treat, so I looked up recipes. They are all basically the same and rely on only three ingredients: heavy cream, sweetened condensed milk and vanilla. To that basic ice cream, many recipes suggest folding in optional extras, such as crushed cookies, chocolate fudge sauce, fruit puree, lemon curd, etc. The main guide I used was a recipe from The Food Network.

As I thought about what I would do to flavour my ice cream, I had the inspiration to try to make a key lime pie flavour. Condensed milk is one of the main ingredients in key lime pie, so I figured it would be a winning combination. I recently tried some Key Lime Pie ice cream from Kawartha Dairy. Theirs had a lime flavour and had bits of graham cracker crust mixed into it. I decided that I should do the same for mine.

Given that I already have a recipe for Key Lime Pie, I figured I would use that recipe as a starting point. I made a reduced amount of graham cracker crust and baked it for 10 minutes in a small baking pan. Once it was fully cool, I roughly chopped until I thought the pieces were the right size to fold into the ice cream. For the ice cream base, I added 1/3 cup of fresh squeezed lime juice and the zest of one lime, as well as a tsp of vanilla to the condensed milk, before folding it into the whipped cream. The taste was spot on!

The recipe said to put the ice cream mixture into a 9 x 5 inch loaf tin, freeze it for two hours, then fold in the toppings and freeze for 3 more hours until firm. When I went to fold in my toppings, I thought it would be quite messy to get it all incorporated in that little tin, so I ended up transferring the ice cream to a bowl, folding in the ingredients and transferring it back to the loaf pan. I’m going to suggest doing the first freeze in a bowl and then transferring it to the loaf pan after folding in the crust mixture. The ice cream was still quite soft, so it was easy to fold in the ingredients.

The resulting ice cream tasted exactly like key lime pie! It doesn’t freeze extremely hard, so it’s more like a gelato in texture. The bits of graham cracker crust throughout the ice cream gave a nice texture contrast. This one is a definite re-do recipe!

I know I have a few readers who are either vegan or lactose intolerant. I wanted to let you know that I saw some recipes out there that used condensed coconut milk and cold coconut cream to make the recipe.

[recipe title=”No-Churn Key Lime Pie Ice Cream” servings=”12 (6 cups total)” preptime=”10 minutes” cooktime=”10 minutes plus 5 hours chilling time” difficulty=”easy”]
[recipe-notes]
This no-churn ice cream takes just minutes of work and makes a delicious cool summer time treat!
[/recipe-notes][recipe-ingredients]
For the crust

  • 1/2 cup (118 ml) graham cracker crumbs
  • 1 Tbsp (15 ml) granulated sugar
  • pinch of cinnamon
  • 2 Tbsp unsalted butter, melted
  • For the ice cream

  • 1 tbsp lime zest (from about 2 limes)
  • 1/3 cup (78 ml)fresh squeezed lime juice (from about 3 limes)
  • – 1 tsp vanilla

  • 1 14-oz (414 ml) can sweetened condensed milk
    – pinch of salt
    – 2 cups (500 ml) cold heavy cream
    Equipment
    – 1 9 x 5 inch loaf pan, chilled
    – 1 medium metal or glass bowl, chilled
    [/recipe-ingredients][recipe-directions]
  • For the crust
    1. Preheat oven to 350 F
    2. Grease a 8-inch square baking pan.
    3. In a medium bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs, sugar and cinnamon. Pour melted butter over top and stir to combine.
    4. Press crumb mixture evenly over half of the bottom of your prepared pan.
    5. Bake for 8-10 minutes until golden. Let cool completely.
    6. Once cool, turn out onto a cutting board and rough chop into bite sized pieces.

    For the Ice Cream
    1. In a medium bowl, whisk together condensed milk, lime juice, lime zest, vanilla
    and a pinch of salt. Set aside.
    2. In the chilled bowl of a stand mixer, whip cream until you have stiff peaks.
    3. Fold 1/3 of cream into the condensed milk mixture to lighten it. Then fold the condensed milk into remaining cream.
    4. Cover and chill in freezer for 2 hours.
    5. After the mixture had chilled for 2 hours, fold in the chopped graham cracker crust pieces.
    6. Transfer mixture to a chilled loaf pan and freeze until ice cream is solid and scoopable, about 3 hours.
    [/recipe]

    . In a medium bowl, combine graham cracker crumbs, sugar and cinnamon. Pour melted butter over top and stir to combine.

    Press crumb mixture evenly over half of the bottom of your prepared pan. (I made double the amount in the recipe but only ended up using half.)

    Bake for 8-10 minutes until golden. Let cool completely.

    Once cool, turn out onto a cutting board and rough chop into bite sized pieces.

    In a medium bowl, whisk together condensed milk, lime juice, lime zest, vanilla and a pinch of salt. Set aside.

    In the chilled bowl of a stand mixer, whip cream until you have stiff peaks.

    Fold 1/3 of cream into the condensed milk mixture to lighten it. Then fold the condensed milk into remaining cream. Cover and chill in freezer for 2 hours.

    After the mixture had chilled for 2 hours, fold in the chopped graham cracker crust pieces.

    Transfer mixture to a chilled loaf pan and freeze until ice cream is solid and scoopable, about 3 hours.

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