Tuesday 18 June 2013

Donk's Key Lime Pie

Donk. It's short for Donkey, and we call him Donkey supposedly because of his big ears.  My Uncle Donk, or Uncle Richard, is one of my dad's oldest mates and I've known him for as long as I can remember. As well as being one of the longest standing friends of my dad's, he is also the most hilarious man I know. I can't really explain why, but he's just that hilarious. I can't talk to him without laughing! I was due to go home up north a couple weeks ago, and my mum was on the phone beforehand when she said "hold on, your Uncle Donk wants a word". I immediately started laughing anticipating the hilarious conversation that would ensue... When he came on the line, to my surprise he told me he'd been reading Bea's Bakes, and requested a key lime pie "And not a sweet one, I like it tart!" he said. After setting to work finding a great pie to feature on here as well as something that would be satisfyingly tart, I found a recipe that I was quite happy with in my copy of Nigella Lawson's book How to be a Domestic Goddess 

It's a really great Key Lime pie, but not a traditional American refrigerated key lime with gelatine. I always find those too sweet anyway! This is a baked key lime pie, with a traditional British feel to it. As much as I love Nigella, I knew her recipe wouldn't be tart enough, so I added an extra lime for good luck. Here's the recipe:

You'll need to preheat your oven to 160C/320F/Gas4!

Ingredients:

For the filling...

  • 5 large egg yolks
  • 397g tin of condensed milk
  • zest and juice from 6 limes
  • 3 large egg whites

For the base...

  • 200g Digestive biccies
  • 50g Unsalted butter, left out until really soft

Tools:

  • Potato masher or blender
  • Medium mixing bowl
  • Medium jug
  • Wooden spoon
  • 30cm cake/tart tin
  • Electric hand mixer
  • Normal whisk
  • Paper cake tin liner
Method: 
I kid you not- this is the easiest pie I've ever made, it's very simple, and SO delicious. First thing to do is possibly the most fun part- crushing the biscuits! You can use a blender for this but it's much less stress-relieving if you bash them up yourself, ha! Make sure you grind them up into a really fine powder, and then add the butter, stirring until it looks nice and oily/melted. Now to press it into the tin: don't just press it onto the bottom, press it up the sides of the tin too, and make sure it's evenly distributed. You could line the tin with a cake tin liner, I did this and it made it much easier to remove the pie from the tin so I would definitely recommend it! Now put the tin in the fridge while you make the filling to keep it nice and firm/fresh. The filling is pretty easily done, just whisk the egg yolks until they're a bit fluffy and lighter in colour, then zest and juice all 6 limes. Whisk that in and make sure it doesn't curdle or go lumpy by making sure you whisk really fast (Tired arm? Make the motion come from the flick of your wrist instead of your whole arm. You can whisk a lot faster without becoming as tired). Now add the can of condensed milk, and again whisk it in quickly to avoid lumps. Finally, the last part will be to whisk the egg whites (not by hand, or you'll actually die of exhaustion!!). Use your electric mixer and beat until it forms stiff, fluffy peaks. Once this is achieved, very, very, lovingly and gently fold them in to the eggy mixture without knocking the air out too much. Make sure you completely combine it, because you don't want to have random raw bits of egg white.

Bake:
Fill your base up until it's nice and full, and bake for about 30 minutes. I found that it was way too wobbly after this even though when you bake a tart like this it should have a wobble, so I turned off the oven and left it in there to cool- it worked! So if you do that it'll come out with a bit of a wobble but be nice and brown. Nigella warned that after cooling it would sink, but not to worry as "that's just the way it goes". Mine did indeed sink, but honestly it won't change the taste. It was still delicious!

Photos by Ahvid <3


Serve warm with some single cream, it's very rich so the cream complements it nicely.

Donk was well impressed! :D



So delicious! Until next time!

Bea
x x x

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