Monday, December 17, 2007

Lemon curd


Lemon curd
Originally uploaded by mellopuffy
Here's a piccie of the lemon curd I made this weekend with Sue's lovely lemons (golly I love homegrown lemons - makes the anaemic lemons from the supermarket look verily poor): very easy to make using the Jo Seagar recipe (which is very similar to the Edmonds lemon honey recipe but with a little less butter), but a word of warning - it will take you a good hour to an hour and a half as you have to bring the mixture to the heat quite slowly.

you need:
4 large lemons
100g butter
2 cups sugar
4 eggs, beaten

Scrub and grate the rind of the lemons, then squeeze the juice. Put the strained juice plus the lemon rind into a small saucepan (I recommend one with a pouring lip). Add the butter in wee cubes, the sugar and finally the eggs, and stir together. Heat gently over a low heat, stirring, until the sugar dissolves. Continue to stir until the mixture thickens (this will take a long time), then pour into hot sterilized jars. Allow to cool, put the lids and store in the fridge until needed (ie on your toast, or perhaps some yummy tarts or even a lemon meringue pie). Its quite important not to heat this up too quickly as then the eggs will curdle and you will have sweet lemony scrambled eggs! When the butter is melting into the mixture it does take on a strange slightly eggy look but don't worry - keep stirring and eventually the butter will melt entirely into the mix.

PS to sterilize your glass jars - heat with lids in 120C oven for 30 min or boil in water on your stove for 15 min.

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