The Florida Keys Rang In Their Bicentennial With A Possibly Record-Breaking Key Lime Pie

If you've ever juiced little key limes for a pie, you know they're small. They're about a ⅓ of the size of a standard lime. It takes about six limes to yield a cup of lime juice from Persian limes, but the same volume from key limes requires around 40 limes. Now imagine how many key limes would have to be juiced to make a key lime pie 13 feet in diameter.

The answer is several thousand key limes. Although the exact number of fruits is unknown, Monroe County Commissioner Michelle Lincoln shared with WIKX that the giant key lime pie was made with 16 gallons of key lime juice, 100 gallons of sweetened condensed milk, and approximately 125 pounds of graham crackers. The pie was made to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the establishment of Monroe County — which includes all of the Florida Keys and part of Everglades National Park — in 1823 by the Florida Territorial Legislature (Florida would become a state in 1845). Key lime pie dates back to the early 1800s in Key West, and in 2006, it was designated Florida's official pie. And this pie, completed during the bicentennial celebration on July 3, 2023, may be the largest key lime pie ever made — but it wasn't chefs David Sloan and Paul Menta's first record.

Although we don't know precisely how many limes were used, if it requires (give or take) 40 key limes to produce a cup of juice and the pie required 16 gallons of juice, it stands to reason that the bicentennial pastry used somewhere in the realm of 10,240 key limes. Based on a standard 14.4-ounce box of graham crackers, it took roughly 15,000 graham cracker sheets to make the crust, and the filling theoretically required the equivalent of more than 914 cans of sweetened condensed milk. Per the banner surrounding the giant pie tin, they were indeed aiming for the world record of the biggest key lime pie ever made. And they may actually have done it.

The former record holder was the Florida Key Lime Pie Company of Cocoa Beach, Florida. In 2018, the company commissioned a metal shop to build a custom pie tin for its 12.25-foot wide dessert for the annual Key Lime Pie Festival. In 2014, David Sloan, the chef and festival founder responsible for taking the record back in 2023 during the bicentennial, and three other local chefs broke their own 2013 record by making a 9-foot, 2-inch key lime pie. It used 6,480 key limes, 60 gallons of sweetened condensed milk, and 220 pounds of graham crackers. Now the big question is whether or not the Florida Key Lime Pie Company defends its 2018 title in a battle for the world's biggest key lime pie.