Limey Chocolate Limes Cake

A belated 'Happy New Year' which means I should have given everyone time (about two  weeks) to fall back into their old ways. Time for cake?



Hidden in Tangy Lime; a Smooth Chocolate Buttercream



Starting with a fun make, based on an old English candy - chocolate limes - a crispy lime sweet shell with a smooth chocolate center. Translated into a tangy lime cake with a crunchy lime meringue frosting and a smooth milk chocolate buttercream hidden inside. Now say the title again really fast as a tongue twister....

Chocolate limes from a really lovely, old fashioned, sweet shop in Ross-on-Wye. Where rows of sweet jars line the shelves and you have to ask the lady for what you want and say please ...Tudor Sweets of Ross

 



Text Only Printable Recipe

Ingredients:

Cake:

6oz (170g) Butter
6oz (170g) Caster sugar

3  Large eggs

2 Egg yolks

2 Limes*
6oz (170g) Self raising four

Few drops of green food colouring

Chocolate buttercream:

4oz (110g) Icing sugar
2oz (60g) Butter

2oz (60g) Chocolate (choose your favourite)

Lime Meringue Frosting:

2 Egg whites

15oz (425g) caster or granulated sugar

3 ½ fl oz (100ml) water

*Juice of one of the limes mixed with green and yellow food colouring

Method:

Preheat oven 140c/120c Fan/300F/Gas Mark 2

Grease 2 sandwich cake tins; add greaseproof paper at the bottom as well.

Cream the sugar and butter together. Add the eggs one at a time and beat well. Sift and then fold in half the flour. Add the eggs yolks, the zest from the two limes and the juice from one of the limes. Fold in the rest of the sifted flour and add the food colouring. Put equal quantities into cake tins and place in oven.

Check after 20 minutes. I didn’t want the top to brown too much to detract from the green colour so I baked this at a lower temperature. Remember; cook until risen and a skewer comes cleanly out. Allow to cool. 

Melt the chocolate. Whisk butter and icing sugar together and add melted chocolate. Spread on one cake half and place the other cake half on top. Put into fridge until buttercream has set.

For the meringue frosting, (also known as American Frosting in old Good Housekeeping books), sort the colouring and flavouring out first. This mixture sets pretty quickly and you won’t have time to suddenly look for things. Add two drops of yellow food coloring to two drops of green and add the juice of the remaining lime. This should give you a lime green colour at the end.  

Place sugar and water in a heavy based saucepan and allow water to start to dissolve the sugar. In another bowl whisk both egg whites until stiff. Heat the sugar and water syrup until 240°, or to the soft-ball stage. Pour the syrup slowly into the egg whites whisking all the time. The mixture will start to thicken. Whisk a few drops of the coloured lime mix at a time until the desired shade is acquired, hopefully lime green! Spread the icing, covering the whole of the cake.

Notes:

I endeavour to make as much of my baking 100 % organic and avoid Evil E numbers and such like. However, with food colourings that has become a bit of a challenge and something I am still sourcing and experimenting with. A lot of food colourings may claim to be ‘natural’ but that doesn’t mean organic. These too can be very expensive compared to others and some of the colour ‘holding’ qualities are not so good.

I’m currently researching more brands, especially for a green colour, so I can come up with one that doesn’t impart an unwanted flavour such as spinach to the icing or go from green to pale grey. Fine if you want it but not in this case. I am not adverse to a very pale natural colour but in sugarcraft it's sometimes good to have fun at mimicking the real thing. I wanted a Limey Chocolate Limes Cake!