Chocolate Key Lime Pie

Asked by kemery82. Answered on 18th September 2015

Full question

I've made Nigella's Chocolate Key Lime Pie many times and love it. However, I was wondering if the 175ml of lime juice could be replaced by either lemon juice or lemon curd as I have a surplus of both I'm hoping to put to good use. Obviously then it becomes more of a lemon pie than a lime pie. I'm just wondering if it would still taste good and also for any insight into quantities.

Our answer

Nigella's Chocolate Key Lime Pie (from Kitchen) has a filling made from whisked cream and condensed milk that is flavoured with lime zest and juice. The acid in the juice also reacts with the cream to help the filling to set. We would not recommend using lemon or lime curd instead of the juice and zest as the curd is sweetened and the pie filling will become too sweet.

However it would be possible to make the pie using lemon juice and zest instead of the limes. You would use the same quantities of lemon zest and juice. We are not sure how well the chocolate and lemon combination will work, but you could omit the cocoa powder and chocolate from the biscuit (cookie) base, increase the butter to 60g (4 tablespoons) for a plain base. You may also like to look at Nigella's No-Fuss Fruit Tart recipe (also from Kitchen and on the Nigella website) as this uses 250g (1 cup) lemon curd to flavour the cream cheese filling.