Lime Instead Of Lemon

Our answer

If a recipe contains purely lemon flavour then in most cases you could use lime instead. For example with Nigella's Lemon Pavlova you could certainly use lime zest and curd instead of lemon. For most other recipes it should be possible to use limes, but bear in mind that the flavour will be different.

Limes yield less juice than lemons, so you may need to adjust the quantity if the recipe states "juice of one lemon" (or half a lemon). We estimate that one lemon yields approximately 4 tablespoons (60ml/¼ cup) juice. A lime yields approximately 2 tablespoons. For the zest of one lemon allow the zest of 1½ limes. For the Lemon Tendercake (from AT MY TABLE) you do need an acid ingredient, such as lemon or lime juice, in the cake batter as the acid is needed to react with the bicarbonate of soda to make the cake rise. So making the cake a purely vanilla cake is difficult. However you could use lime juice and zest for the cake rather than lemon juice.