Sunday 24 July 2011

Key Lime Pie at Cake Club


For those of you that read the blog regularly, you will know that I often refer to Nigella Lawsons recipes. I have been an avid fan of hers since watching her Nigella Bites tv series serveral years ago. Her recipes have always been reliably good and are often hard to improve on.


So when my friend Caroline and I chose to bake Key Lime Pie from her wonderful book 'How To Be A Domestic Goddess' at our Cake Club, i had no qualms about how well it would turn out.



The method was simple enough, a basic pie crust made of a mixture of digestive biscuits and butter. The filling involved abit of lime zesting and egg white whipping.


During the baking, the smell of limes tantilisingly enveloped the kitchen. When it came out of the oven alittle burnished on the top, we werent worried, because it was a Nigella recipe and it would be delicious.

As promising as the pie turned out in smell and appearance, taste-wise it did not live up to our Nigella expectations. The base was nice enough, very much like that of a cheesecake. However the filling was what i would imagine lime flavoured scrambled eggs to taste like. It was also difficult to eat without pulling a face from the sourness of the lime juice. We were very disappointed but these things happen occassionally at Cake Club.

I will always remain an advocate of Nigellas recipes, but i wont be recommending or revisiting this one.



Recipe - Key Lime Pie from Nigella Lawsons How To Be A Domestic Godddess

Serves 6-8 people

Ingredients:

For the base:
200g Digestive biscuits
50g softened unsalted butter
23cm springform tin

For the filling:
5 large egg yolks
397g can sweetened condensed milk
zest of 3 limes
150ml lime juice (of 4-5 limes)
3 large egg whites.

Method:

Preheat oven to 160 degrees C/gas mark 3 and put in a baking sheet. Put biscuits and butter into the food processor and blitz until it has all reduced to oily crumbs. Press these into the tin, lining the bottom and going a little way up the sides, and chill in the fridge.

Using an electric whisk, beat the egg yolks until thick, add the can of condensed milk, grated zest and the lime juice. Pour into the lined tin and place on baking sheet in oven. Cook for 25 minutes, when the filling should be firm. It may puff up and then on cooling, fall. 

Leave to cool on a rack before unmoulding, and chill well.

4 comments:

  1. Haha doesnt sound like an overwhelming success but in the words of Delia "cooking like life isnt always perfect". Im going to do a post this week on Nigella's chocolate guinness cake. Its one of my absolute favourites.

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  2. I agree Iona, have had just as many failures as successes in the kitchen. Look forward to seeing the post on the chocolate guiness cake, have heard good things about it.

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  3. Bummer the cake didn't turn out as expected, but I guess they can't all be successes. I've definitely run into this before. I made two or three different batches of pumpkin muffins until I found a winning recipe. This key lime pie still looks great though! Oh, and your friend has a pretty cool name. ;)

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  4. Thanks Caroline, wonder how many other Carolines there are out there who share your love of food!

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