Citrus-y Fresh Key Lime & Ginger Pie

My brother had been asking me for aaages to make him Key Lime Pie. More specifically, Ryan Chong's Key Lime and Ginger Pie from the last series of Great British Bakeoff. I'll be honest, prior to this I have never tried a Key Lime Pie before. This is due to two main reasons: 1. The discovery that the filling is essentially two whole cans of condensed milk sort of scared me slightly 2. Working with pastry, especially shortcrust, is definitely not my strong point. But I made the damn thing anyway. I figured Key Lime Pie looks remarkably like lemon tart, and I love lemon tart so I was quite optimistic that I'd enjoy it. Well, I actually made two. (The recipe makes quite a lot!)

I'm actually quite glad I made this pie, as it involved the christening of my cooks blowtorch that my mum had bought me for my birthday. I have never used a blowtorch before (for fear that these gas filled gadgets would explode in my face) and on this occasion involved my brother ceremoniously managing to get butane gas in his face and all over our kitchen sink during the process of filling the the torch. Needless to say, this part was quite traumatic for me. But the pie was gooood. 

KEY LIME & GINGER PIE
Adapted from Ryan's recipe via BBC Food website
Yields 1 x 30cm pie

Ingredients:

Pastry

400g plain flour
80g icing sugar
4 tsp ground ginger
250g salted butter, cold
3 egg yolks
50ml ice cold water

Filling

2 x 400g tins of sweetened condensed milk
200ml freshly squeezed lime juice (about 6 Limes)
1 tbsp grated fresh stem ginger
4 tsp lime zest
4 egg yolks

Meringue Topping

4 egg whites
225g caster sugar

To Decorate

1 lime, thinly sliced
Icing sugar

Method:

1. Make the pastry: Blitz the plain flour, ground ginger and butter in a food processor until it resembles fine bread crumbs and then tip into a large mixing bowl (or if doing by hand, rub the butter into the flour until it resembles fine bread crumbs) 
2. Whisk the egg yolks and water together in a bowl and add to the flour. Mix with your hands until incorporated and a dough begins to develop. Be careful not to overwork the dough. Wrap in clingfilm and chill in the fridge for 30mins.
3. Roll out the dough to the thickness of approximately 3mm and press into a  30cm tart tin, allowing the dough to overhang the sides. Make sure the sides are pressed tightly into the corners, so no air bubbles are trapped. Chill for another 30mins.
4. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200C. Prick the base of the tart several times with a fork, and trim the overhanging pastry with a sharp knife. 
5. Place a sheet of baking paper on top of the pastry, top with a layer of baking beans/rice/lentils and blind bake for 15mins. Remove the paper/beans and bake for another 5-10mins until light golden brown. Leave to cool. Reduce the oven heat to 170C.
6. Make the filling:  Whisk together the lime juice and zest, condensed milk and egg yolks until incoporated and thickened. Stir in the stem ginger.
7. Pour filling into the pastry shell and smooth over the top with a palette knife.
8. Bake for 15-20mins until the filling is set, but still has a slight wobble in the centre when shaken. Leave to cool.
9. Once cool, remove the pie from the tin and make the meringue topping. In a clean heatproof bowl, whisk the caster sugar and egg whites over a pan of simmering water until sugar is dissolved (make sure bottom of the bowl doesn't touch the water- you don't want scrambled eggs!)
10. Once dissolved, whisk using a stand mixer with whisk attachment (or hand mixer) until firm, glossy peaks form. Using your favourite piping nozzle, pipe the meringue around the pie.
11. To finish, use a blowtorch to lightly toast the meringue. Decorate with the lime slices and dust icing sugar on top. 

Notes:

• If I made this again I'd tweak some areas- like add more ground ginger to the pastry, or even better, make a coconut and lime version of key lime pie (ingenius!)
• The recipe states to use a 30cm tart tin. I made two pies using a 20ishcm tart tin and 15cm cake tin.
• I used a Swiss meringue for decoration as opposed to the Italian version used in the original recipe. Feel free to use Italian meringue, if you prefer.
• The quantity of ingredients to make the meringue topping makes a lot of meringue. If you're intending to cover the whole pie then that's fine, otherwise feel free to half the recipe if you intend to only pipe a ring of meringue like I have.