Lemon, Lime and Ginger Nut Squares

Some days you need baking.

It's been a rough few days for me and I've been struggling. So sometimes, instead of staring uncomprehendingly at a screen, or sitting looking into yourself, you should go up to the kitchen and bread a packet of ginger nuts into small pieces using your hands because it's therapeutic and allows your mind to go blissfully blank.

Then you can get all the anger out by squashing them with a wooden spoon too.

As you may remember, I had a lot of limes left over from my strawberry, lime and coconut slices. A big part of student cooking is working out how to use up leftover ingredients. Often you'll need half a pack of something for one recipe, then in using that up you use quarter of a pack of something else... the cycle can seem to go on for a long time.

My Grandma gave us a photocopy of a key lime pie recipe a few years ago and it became a much loved favourite in our house. I had planned to make that one, but when Mum hadn't emailed it to me in time for my weekly shop (it's usually bi-weekly but I just can't face 2 shops this week) I decided to make my own recipe.

And because I'm on a squares kick at the moment I decided to make it in my 8 inch square tin rather than a round tin. It may be because it's a lot easier to judge portions when you're cutting things into squares, in my opinion.

But I didn't want to do the whole thing the American way. Nooooo. I wanted a ginger nut biscuit base. Only I thought 200g of ginger nuts would easily be enough. After all, they only used 250g to do the base AND sides of a 9 inch round tin (about equivalent to an 8 inch square) in another recipe.

So I found myself looking at a tin that was about half covered, with huge, gaping bald patches.

I've felt a bit defeated recently. For some reason staring at that sight roused me. Everything else is going wrong. I'm not going to let my baking go wrong too.

So in went a wodge of flour, some more sugar, some more melted butter. By eye, this was. I'm afraid I can't write it into the recipe so I'll just tell you that it would be a good idea to buy more ginger nuts.

But it worked, so I baked that bit (if it had just been ginger nuts and butter it would have gone in the fridge). And towards the end of making the filling I remembered it was in there so hastily got it out. It was fine.

Then onto the filling. In went the zest of 2 limes, the juice of 3, and the rest of the filling ingredients from a lemon squares recipe. Then I decided it wasn't quite flavoursome enough. In went a huge squirt from one of those Jif lemons... I bought it for pancake day, decided it tasted 'orrible, and then chucked it in the back of my cupboard. I'm glad it's come in handy for something.

A quick note. Scrape the bottom of the bowl after your first mix and mix again. Because I had to mix it in the tin again after finding that a lot of the flour had stuck to the bottom...

And now I won't bore you with a recipe because it was a flop. I went to cut it two hours later and it was a gooey, sticky mess, of which most has gone in the bin, save for a few bits around the edge that had cooked through. Just when you need your baking to go well the most...