When Zander asked for his plain-jane vanilla cake, I decided that I needed to surprise him with a great filling. I was thinking of lime or raspberry- two of his favorite flavors. The only thing was, the way our Saturday was looking, I was really hoping to be able to purchase pre-made filling. So on Saturday I went to a rather large kitchen store in our area, and was dismayed to discover that they’d all but eliminated their cake decorating section of the store. The only things they had for cake supplies were baking pans. They certainly didn’t have any cake fillings on hand either. I was disappointed and for a minute thought about just putting a frosting filling on the cake, but then I saw the bottles of Key Lime Juice on the shelf, and I thought that perhaps I could use that to make a key lime curd for my cake.
Allrecipes to the rescue with a simple recipe right off the bat for a lime curd. I modified the recipe slightly to use the bottled key lime juice instead of regular lime juice, and then since I had regular limes on hand, I used their zest. You know, even if I had key limes on hand, I don’t think I would have zested them. I have a vague memory of zesting key limes and how long it took to grate a measurable amount of zest…
Fruit curds are really easy to make, provided you follow the directions correctly. There is a moment where you are tempering eggs that the curd could go quickly from silky to chunky if the eggs scramble. I followed the directions for the double boiler most of the way for this recipe- I liked using the double boiler, I think that made it less likely that I would scramble the eggs instead of incorporating them. I’d tempered my eggs and stirred them back into the bowl on the double boiler, but it was taking forever for it to thicken. Honestly, I was making this at 8:00 at night, and I still needed to chill it completely and completely assemble and decorate my cake. I did not want to be up until the wee hours.
So after about ten minutes of stirring my curd, I decided to grab a small, clean saucepan and dump my curd into that. I put it directly on the heat instead of on the double boiler, and stirred until it came to a boil and thickened up for me. It did the trick. I took the curd off the heat, scraped it into a metal bowl and then popped it into the freezer to cool down quickly.
The key lime curd was spectacular. It was tart and tangy and it was the PERFECT addition to this cake! It went with the vanilla cake so well, and you could take a sweet bite with frosting, and then take a bite with the tangy filling, and you were able to eat the whole piece of cake without feeling like you’d consumed eight days worth of sugar. My family wants me to see if there are other things that I can incorporate this lime curd in- they really loved it.
Key Lime Curd
1 cup sugar 1/4 cup butter 3/4 cup bottled key lime juice (or fresh if you’re really ambitious) 1 tablespoon lime zest 2 eggs, beatenDirections:
Combine the sugar, butter, key lime juice and zest in the top of a double boiler over medium heat. Stir until the butter is melted and the sugar completely dissolved.
Working quickly, stir about two tablespoons of the mixture into the eggs- beating continuously while doing so. Add a little more of the hot sugar mixture and mix well. Then, add the egg mixture into the hot sugar/juice mixture, stirring continuously.
Cook and stir until the mixture thickens and will coat the back of a metal spoon- about 20 minutes.
Cool completely before using. Store in the refrigerator for up to a week.