Hi everyone, I figure I'd start using my blog to share some recipes. I absolutely adore cooking but I am horribly guilty for not following recipes and making things up on the fly... this often works out well, but then I forget what I did so I can't reproduce it perfectly! I've started trying to note down the recipe as I cook, and here is the first! This is an adaptation of several recipes, as I often find lemon curd is not lemony enough and too sweet, so I've tried to fix that! I have attached a little PDF of the recipe free to download at the bottom of this post, otherwise the recipe is written up here. This will make about a litre of lemon curd (the photo is from testing, which halved everything).
Set-up
You'll need something to store your lemon curd in. I often use mason jars like the ones linked, but any kind of jar will work as long as they are oven safe so you can sterilize them... To sterilize there are a few methods, but here are two main ones:
Pop your jars into a large pot of water and bring to the boil and boil it for ~15m
OR pop your jars into the oven and turn up to 115-120C and once it's up to temp, cook them for 15m
You also need to set up a double boiler... by this all I mean is grabbing a large glass bowl and a pot underneath it (see recipe PDF).
Ingredients
UNWAXED lemons
you need 240ml lemon juice, so this is about 6-8 lemons
Zest of 6-8 lemons (or however many you juice)
8 eggs
4 whole eggs (white and yolk)
4 egg yolks
300g white granulated sugar
Good pinch of (table) salt
180g UNSALTED butter (cut into cubes)
Let's Cook
Take your pot and put 1-2” water in there, and bring to a boil
As your water is coming to a boil, put the lemon juice, most of the lemon zest, sugar, eggs, and the pinch of salt into the glass bowl
Once the water is boiling, bring down to a simmer and place the glass bowl of ingredients on top
Get whisking with a silicone whisk – don’t let the mixture sit as the eggs will curdle – keep it moving!
As you keep whisking (does not need to be too frantic) the mixture will slowly thicken…
When it is a similar consistency to hollandaise, turn off the heat
Pop the glass bowl onto the table, and add in the butter cubes and keep whisking (do this in 2-3 batches) the mixture will become a little thicker and silky
Once all the butter as melted into your curd, over with some cling film and let it cool for 15m
Assuming your sterilized jars are cool enough to touch, start spooning your mixture into the jars
The mixture will still be a little runny – but it’ll thicken more as it cools
Put the jars (not too tight), and let it cool for another 15-20 before tightening the lids and popping into the fridge and don’t forget to add the rest of your zest!
Try and wait a few hours before enjoying! Do keep in fridge…I am sure it won’t last too long…