How To Make Toddler Cheesecake (Key Lime Pie)
Intimidated and/or terrified by the skill, time, and/or mess involved in baking desserts for your child? Know this: your young child knows even less than you about it. He/she doesn’t have the memory or experience of the the taste and texture of the dish you want to make; he/she doesn’t know which ingredients are used to make it. That means you can “cheat”--both in terms of what you make and how you make it–and he/she is likely to love it as much as the original.
Case in point: this hybrid of key lime pie and cheesecake. In its typical form, key lime pie relies heavily on condensed milk, which is sugary and fattening without providing any nutritional value; cheesecake is just a lot of cream cheese beaten with a few eggs. Here, though, the soft cheese is balanced with Greek yogurt, adding protein; we significantly decrease the added sugar, too. The result is a toddler-friendly balance of cheesecake’s creamy firmness with the zing of a citrus pie; the ability to adjust sweetness, tartness, and texture are entirely up to you. And it couldn’t be easier to make, with literally no baking required–which just might make you a dessert guy, after all.
- 1 lb Key Limes (most grocery stores will sell key limes in bulk bags of one pound)
- 1 tsp Gelatin
- 8 oz Cream Cheese (one brick)
- 1 cup Greek Yogurt (full-fat recommended)
- 1/3 cup Maple Syrup
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- 1 Premade Pie Crust (if you want to make your own; see Notes)
- Allow your cream cheese to soften by setting it outside the fridge for 20-30 minutes.
- Zest three limes and place shavings into a large bowl.
- Juice the limes: the full bag if you want a full and tart lime taste; all but four or five if you want a less citrusy flavor; or 6-8 if you want a plain cheesecake with a hint of lime.
- In a small bowl, add in the gelatin and two tablespoons of the lime juice; mix until blended. Microwave the rest of the lime juice for roughly 30-40 seconds, then pour into lime-gelatin mix, again blending until the gelatin is fully dissolved in the liquid.
- Add the cream cheese, yogurt, maple syrup, and a big splash of vanilla extract to the large bowl containing the lime zest. Blend–and we strongly recommend a hand mixer for this one–until combined; add in the lime-gelatin liquid and continue blending until the contents of the bowl look, feel, and taste like, well, cheesecake.
- Pour mixture into crust, spreading and smoothing out to ensure even distribution across the crust. Refrigerate for at least an hour (and feel free to freeze for 20-30 minutes if time is short).
Don’t worry too much about presentation here–in fact, we find it’s easier and more pleasant for a young child to eat it like ice cream or yogurt: in a bowl, with a spoon, and mashed up. If your child finds the flavor of the pie too sharp or tart, you mellow by drizzling with a bit of honey and/or dusting the top with graham cracker crumbs.
A full bag of key limes will produce roughly 7-8 tablespoons of juice, so you can substitute with bottled lime juice; however, given that processed citrus juice can be mellower than fresh fruit, be sure and check the flavor of the pie filling before finishing to see if you need to add more maple syrup, vanilla, and/or even lime to the mix to get the taste to your liking. You could also use lemons instead of limes, but start with roughly 5 tablespoons of juice first, taste testing it once mixed to see if any more lemon juice is needed.
Making your own pie crust can be crazy easy--it just takes time. To do so, melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a bowl; pour in enough graham cracker crumbs into the bowl that when mixed with the butter the texture becomes that of wet sand. When solid enough to hold, place the butter-crumb mixture into a pie pan and push/press around the pan until the bottom and sides are covered in the crust; refrigerate for 30 minutes. Bake for 10-15 minutes at 350; allow to cool before pouring in cheesecake mixture.
Brad (the Dad) is the founder and Chief Recipe Officer of New Dad's Kitchen. His own cooking/feeding journey started humbly during his son's infancy, preparing and managing his son's bottle intake in order to support his wife; it has since blossomed into a full-on passion to feed his child and family delicious and healthy meals that can satisfy both a toddler and his very tired parents.
