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Hello! I'm Emily and I'm going to show you how to make a cake version of a key lime pie
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Start by baking a vanilla cake and whipping up a batch of buttercream. Check out my tutorial
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for buttercream you can make in just 4 minutes. Now we're going to make lime curd
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Peel two limes using a sharp knife. Try to take off only the skin and leave behind the
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bitter white pith. Squeeze the limes and save the juice. Separate 6 egg yolks from the egg whites by cracking each egg and passing the yolk
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back and forth between the two halves of the eggshell, letting the egg white drip into
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a bowl until only the yolk is left in the shell. Place the egg yolks in a saucepan with 3 quarters of a cup of sugar. Whisk them together for
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one minute until they look pale and creamy. Add the lime peel and juice and whisk together
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Then place the saucepan over medium-low heat and cook gently for 10 minutes, stirring or
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whisking the whole time. You'll notice the liquid getting thicker, but not as thick as you would expect. It will
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get much thicker when it cools. Just cook it until the liquid coats the back of a spoon
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or if you have a thermometer, you can measure the temperature and it will be ready when it gets to 175 degrees Celsius or 350 degrees Fahrenheit
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Pour it into a bowl through a sieve to remove the lime peels. Add half a cup of butter and
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stir until it melts into the curd. Place cling film or saran wrap over the bowl, pressing it down to touch the surface of the
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curd. This prevents a skin forming on the curd. Refrigerate the lime curd for at least an hour until it thickens and then you'll be
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ready to use it on your cake! Place your first layer of cake on a cake board, attaching it with a dollop of buttercream
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Brush the cake with simple syrup, which is made by boiling equal quantities of water
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and sugar until the sugar dissolves. This will keep the cake moist
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Pipe a ring of vanilla buttercream frosting around the cake and fill it with lime curd
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The buttercream keeps the curd from seeping out of the cake. Continue layering to build your cake
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Now we're going to crumb coat the cake with vanilla buttercream. A crumb coat is a very
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very thin layer of frosting and its purpose is to catch any crumbs that come off the cake
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so they don't get into your final coat of frosting. For tips on this, watch my tutorial
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on how to frost a cake. We'll final coat the cake
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And now for the border. I've blitzed up 4 graham crackers in a food processor and I'm
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pressing them into the frosting around the base of the cake. This represents the pie crust of a key lime pie
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You can use a pastry brush or a frosting scraper or just your fingers to brush off the extra
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graham cracker crumbs from your cake board. Now for the fun part. Pour a quarter of a cup of lime curd over the top of the cake
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If your cake is bigger than 6 inches you'll probably need a bit more, so keep adding it
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a spoonful at a time until you have enough to cover the top of the cake
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If your curd is quite runny like mine, it will spill over the sides of the cake to create
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a nice drip effect. If it's thicker and doesn't drip over, you can put some lime curd in a
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ziplock bag and snip off a corner and then squeeze it out around the rim of the cake
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to create your own drips. Now put some vanilla buttercream in a piping bag. I'm using a round tip but you could use
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a star tip or any other shape you like. Squeeze out little dollops of frosting around the
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cake to finish it off. And there it is! Refrigerate the cake until 2 or 3 hours before serving. Be very careful when you cut into
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it. Hopefully you'll do a better job than I did! Subscribe to my YouTube channel for more cake tutorials every week
