Seville orange and ginger pie
By:
Emily Gussin
Food producer and sustainability lead, delicious.
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Published: 11 Jan 24
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Updated: 18 Mar 24
Seville oranges are made for more than just marmalade. Their distinctive sour bitterness and floral taste is great in desserts, where things can easily get too sweet. The ginger biscuit base and the cardamom spiked mousse-like filling add to the aromatic flavour to this key lime pie-esque dessert.
Next time: try our seville orange marmalade drizzle cake.
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Serves 8-10
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Hands-on time 45 min, plus several hours cooling and chilling
Ingredients
- 5 seville oranges
- 7 green cardamom pods, bashed open and seeds crushed
- 150g golden caster sugar, plus 2 tbsp
- 200g unsalted butter, chilled and chopped
- 3 medium free-range eggs, beaten
- 300ml double cream
For the base
- 300g ginger biscuits
- 150g unsalted butter
Specialist kit
- 23cm pie dish or tart tin
- Piping bag with nozzle (we used a star nozzle)
Method
- Finely zest three of the oranges and use a vegetable peeler to pare strips off the remaining two – set the strips aside for later. Halve and squeeze the juice from the oranges, using a sieve to catch any pips, until you have 200ml (you may not need all the oranges – see Don’t Waste It).
- Put the zest and juice in a small heavy-based saucepan and add the crushed cardamom seeds, 150g of sugar, butter, eggs and a pinch of salt. Cook the mixture over a low-medium heat, stirring regularly. Everything will meld
together, then the mixture will start to thicken – this takes some time but don’t be tempted to increase the heat as the eggs will scramble. The curd is ready when it coats the back of a spoon and holds its shape when you draw a line through it with your finger. Once ready, pour into a bowl to cool completely (this will take several hours).
- While the curd cools, make the biscuit base. Whizz the biscuits to a crumb in a food processor or bash with the end of a rolling pin in a bowl. Melt the butter, then stir into the biscuits. Press evenly into the base and up the sides of the pie dish or tart tin. Chill until the filling is ready.
- Next, make candied peel from the reserved orange peel strips. Slice the strips into matchsticks. Put them in a small pan, cover with water, bring to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes, then drain. In the same pan, combine the 2 tbsp golden caster sugar with 2 tbsp water. Heat gently, stirring to dissolve the sugar, then remove the spoon and add the orange peel strips. Simmer for 3-4 minutes until the syrup thickens and the peel is coated. Spread the peel strips out on a sheet of baking paper to cool, curling them so they dry in decorative shapes.
- Once the orange curd has cooled completely, pour 200ml of the cream into a large bowl and whisk until almost forming soft peaks (you don’t want to overwhip it as the cream will continue to thicken as you add it to the curd). Stir the cream into the curd in 2 batches until all combined, then scrape into the chilled biscuit base and spread evenly. Chill for 2 hours.
- Softly whip the remaining cream and pipe evenly spaced stars on top of the pie (around the outside, as we’ve done, is a good look). Scatter over the candied orange peel strips to serve. The pie will keep in the fridge for up to 3 days.
Recipe from January 2024 Issue
Nutrition
Nutrition: per serving
- Calories
- 647kcals
- Fat
- 51g (31g saturated)
- Protein
- 4.4g
- Carbohydrates
- 41g (29g sugars)
- Fibre
- 0.7g
- Salt
- 0.4g
delicious. tips
Easy swaps If seville oranges aren’t in season, swap for 2 oranges and 2 lemons or limes – you’ll get more juice from a regular orange than a seville.
Don’t waste it Keep any unjuiced seville oranges in the fridge and use the juice in place of lime juice in cooking or cocktails.