Lime Curd Cakey Squares

There’s not much I miss about living in Sydney – other than family, friends and decent dumplings. I do, however, miss my garden and I especially miss the lime tree we had in the backyard. It’s all been flattened now – the house, the garden, the pool. Ours and next door’s massive block have been sectioned off and sold as six building blocks.

I’m not sad about the house. While Sarah grew up in it, we knew that if we stayed, we had to do so many renovations and had, in fact, contemplated a knockdown-rebuild. I am sad about the lime tree. We’d have so many each July that we’d have a week (sometimes more) where everything we cooked included lime and, with the leftovers, I’d make lime jams and pickles. Sarah still talks about Lime week.

I’ve attempted to grow a lime tree here but haven’t found the right place with the right amount of drainage to last through the rainy mutant locusty season. In the meantime, however, one of Grant’s colleagues has been bringing in bags of limes for me most weeks – and I’ve been sending some of them back—in cake or curd form. It seemed like a nice way of saying thanks. I have, however, lost count of how many times I’ve made this over the last few weeks (and another batch has gone to Grant’s work this morning) so figured that while it was sitting in a Substack post, it had better be preserved here too.

I make this in the Thermomix—purely because I can’t be faffed standing and stirring the curd—but you can find a similar recipe here that uses shop-bought curd or here if you want to make your own. And when I want to make just the curd, I double the quantities and cook it for an extra couple of minutes. Too easy.

Cake mixture

• 300 g self-raising flour
• 120g unsalted butter, diced
• 220 g white sugar
• 2 eggs

Lime curd

• 60 ml lime juice (3-4 limes)
• 60 g butter
• 110 g white sugar
• 1 egg

For the lime curd

Place all lime curd ingredients into the mixing bowl and cook 5 min/100°C/speed 4. Pour into a bowl and set aside until needed. You might think it’s too thin, but it firms up on standing. Clean and dry mixing bowl.

For the cake

Place all cake ingredients into the mixing bowl and mix 30 sec/speed 5 or until combined. Transfer to a bowl and set aside.

Putting it together

Preheat oven to 180°C (160C fan). Grease and line a square cake tin (20 cm).

Press half the cake mixture into the base of the tin, top with the lime curd, then crumble over the remaining cake mixture to cover. Bake for 30 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm or cold, dusted with icing sugar (optional).