How to Make Delicious Lemon Curd
I was gifted recently with LOTS of lemons! The real ones, by the way---not the metaphorical lemons, thank goodness! Bags of them! Fresh, beautiful, sweet-smelling lemons! When I received all these lemons, I immediately began thinking about what to do with them! I have always wanted to try making lemon curd, and I found one of my mom's old recipes. I adapted it quite a bit because I didn't have all the right ingredients (like caster sugar?). The ingredients I used are those that most everyone has on hand, and it turned out SO delicious anyway! Here is how I made lemon curd---which is kind of like a buttery lemon pudding!
What is lemon curd? It sure is a strange sounding thing, right? Well, it's a lovely, buttery yellow lemon type of pudding. You can eat it by itself or use it as a delicious topping. Best of all, it's EASY to make and lasts for awhile in the refrigerator too. Find out how to make this yummy happy lemon pudding!
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Ingredients to Make Lemon Curd
3.5 ounces of butter (I used a kitchen scale to weigh it out)--You could probably use a half cup too
1 cup of sugar
3 whole eggs and 1 egg yolk
4 regular sized lemons or 5 smallish lemons, organic
Tools You'll Need to Make Lemon Curd
Small glass jars (I just used small Mason jelly jars)
Directions for Making Lemon Curd
1) Zest your lemons! You can do this with the fine side of a grater, or you can use a lemon zester. When you zest the lemons, you're basically removing the peel in very small bits.
2) Get out your double boiler and place water in the bottom pan---about an inch or two. It shouldn't touch the bottom of the top pan.
3) Place the butter, sugar, lemon zest, and the lemon juice from the lemons into the top saucepan and stir occasionally until the butter has melted.
4) While the butter is melting, place the eggs and the yolk into a bowl and mix them up.
5) Pour the eggs into the saucepan. As the mixture cooks, stir occasionally---you don't want the eggs cooking into blobs--you'll want to keep it smooth.
6) The cook time will vary some depending on your climate and how high you have the heat, but I cooked mine on medium low. The cook time will probably also be affected by how much you change the recipe too (I changed this one a LOT because of what I had on hand.) It took about 20 minutes for my curd to thicken up. It should feel like a nice thick pudding on your fork or whisk.
7) Have your jars ready to go, and pour the curd into the jars. I filled four small jelly jars with this amount of curd---plus enough to have a couple of delicious spoonfuls to eat! :-)
8) The curd will store for a week or two in the refrigerator.
Zesting the lemons---I just used the fine side of a cheese grater, but you can buy a zester specifically for this purpose.
These are the zested lemons! They are so much easier to juice with the peel removed!
Here is the mixture going into the double boiler saucepan.
Stirring away! See those blobs? You don't want those! I just removed them, but that told me I had the heat too high.
The finished lemon curd! You can see bits of the zest---I think next time, I'll use a real zester because I think the zest will be finer.
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Here are the four little jars of lemon curd! These won't last even a week, I can tell you! It's that good!
What to Do With Lemon Curd?
1) You can eat it as is! It's absolutely delicious!
2) You can use it as a filling in donuts or scones.
3) You can use it as a topping for pastries or ice cream.
4) You can mix it into bread pudding or other things you bake.
5) Add it to anything you want a sweet and creamy lemon taste.
You know what was nice about making lemon curd? It's a pretty easy going recipe. I'm not the kind of cook that adheres to every single rule, and I hate measuring things out. This seems to be a pretty forgiving kind of thing to make. And that's my kind of cooking! :-)
That's it for the lemon curd! I'll definitely be making more of this golden goodness! Next time, I'm going to play around with adding less sugar. I'd also like to try out honey in it too.
Have you ever made lemon curd? I'd love to hear your variations, ideas, and comments!
Hugs & Self-Reliance!
Heidi
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