Lemon Curd

One of my favourite lemon recipes is lemon curd – I’ve been waiting (not so) patiently for my lemons to ripen and, as you can see in the photo, I couldn’t wait for all the green to be gone from the fruit before I made my first batch.  I’m not sure what the difference is between lemon curd, lemon honey and lemon butter.  My recipe is labelled lemon honey, Australians apparently call it lemon butter, but most people that I’ve talked to know it as lemon curd.  Whatever you call it, it is delicious spread on hot buttered toast, stirred into yoghurt, spooned over ice cream, put into tarts, served with blueberry scones, layered with meringues or simply eaten from the jar!

Ingredients

500g Sugar

125g Butter

4 Eggs

Rind and Juice of 4 Lemons

Use a grater or zester to peel the lemon rind, taking only the yellow part as the white pith is bitter.  Juice the lemons.

Beat the eggs a little and then put all the ingredients into the top of a double saucepan, with water in the bottom saucepan.

If you don’t have a double saucepan you can improvise: one of my stainless steel mixing bowls is just the right size for one of my saucepans. 

Cook slowly until thick and smooth, stirring or whisking for most of the time.

It can be a bit hard to decide when it is ready.  The time will also depend on how hot the water is – some recipes say it is ready in 10 minutes.  On my gas hob I have the heat fairly low so that I don’t get steam escaping in bursts up the side of the bowl.  Generally I stir it for about half an hour and nothing seems to happen at all, and then it starts to look a little darker and you can feel some thickness starting to coat on the bottom.  At this point it is ready and even though it still looks very runny it will set nicely in the jars as it cools.  I have continued to stir previously for another 15 minutes or more but it doesn’t get any thicker!

Pour into hot sterilised jars and seal.