This plate of loveliness gets its name from its main ingredient: small Key limes that grow throughout the Florida Keys.
Ingredients
They are sharper than the limes you and I can get in our supermarkets. The good people of Florida take their ownership of this dish very seriously, and this is demonstrated through two events.
The first was in 1965 when Florida state representative Bernie Papy Jr introduced legislation calling for a $100 fine to be levied against anyone advertising Key lime pie not made with Key limes.
Strangely enough, the bill failed. Then on 1st July 2006, the Florida House of Representatives and the Florida Senate both passed legislation selecting Key lime pie as the official pie of the State of Florida. A proud moment for Floridians everywhere.
Serves: 8
300g chocolate hobnobs (or similar chocolate biscuit)
75g butter
3 medium egg yolks
1 x 397g tin of condensed milk
Zest and juice of 4 limes
300ml double cream
1 tbsp icing sugar
50g dark chocolate, shavings
Method
- Preheat your oven to 160°C.
- In a food processor, blitz the biscuits so that they resemble a breadcrumb texture. Pop these into a bowl.
- In a small pan, melt the butter and add it to the biscuits and mix through.
- Pop the mixture into a 22 cm tart tin, and press it down so that it’s an even thickness across the tin and up the sides. I use the back of a dessertspoon to do this. Leave aside to cool.
- In a bowl, pop in the egg yolks and whisk for about 1 minute using an electric whisk. Add in the condensed milk and whisk through for another couple of minutes. Now mix in the juice and zest of the limes, and pour the mixture into your pie base.
- Pop back into the oven for about 15 minutes. After this, remove from the oven and chill for at least 3–4 hours, but if you can do it overnight, all the better!
To serve
Carefully take the pie out of the tin and slice a generous piece onto a plate. Add the cream to the icing sugar and whisk until you have soft peaks.
You can serve this cream either spread on the cake or dolloped on each individual slice. Finish the dish off by sprinkling some lime zest over the pie, and grate some of the dark chocolate on there too!
