I couldn't sleep the other night (and by couldn't sleep I mean I had too much wine and woke up at 1 AM, bright eyed and bushy tailed, as part of this new phase of life I'm learning about called "being an adult" where I experience heartburn, body aches, hangovers, and bills) so I decided to make lemon curd.
My parents have fruit trees at the place in Arizona which leads me, as someone who never really cared for lemons, to have excessive amounts of lemons and limes and forces me to get creative in how to use them. When I lived in Minnesota my outdoor mailbox would occasionally be stuffed with flat-rate packages full of frozen solid lemons because Minnesota is one cold son-of-a-bitch and those lemons turned straight into baseballs.
Since these lemons were frozen and thawed I ended up using them pretty quickly and found all kinds of uses: lemon chicken, infused water, lemonade, limoncello, lemon bars, marinades, lemon-blueberry cake, and more. One of my favorite kitchen staples that I discovered from this excess of lemons is lemon curd. It's so tart, so sweet, so luxurious. It bites your tongue and then caresses in a saucy way with it's rich, sugary, sweetness. I love finding different things to put in on and mix it in with: ice cream, fruit, pancakes, yogurt, oatmeal, desserts, and so many other things. I worked as a dessert cook this summer and one of my staple desserts was a lemon curd pavlova with fresh blueberries. I made a simple pavlova and put a lemon curd and whipped cream filling in the center and sprinkled berries over the top. Um.... HELLO YUM!! Lord, I need to make those again. They were just so damn good.
Anyway.
The lemon curd is really the matter at hand today, so let's talk about that. I have a very basic lemon curd recipe that is quick and delicious and delivers wonderful, consistent results. The other think I like about this recipe is it uses two whole eggs which simplifies the usual difficult part of separating the eggs as well as trying to find out what to do with the egg whites - there are about a badgillion things you can do with egg whites, but lets be real, ain't nobody got time for that, just make the lemon curd and get down with your bad self. game. over.
Lemon Curd
Ingredients:- 100 grams of sugar
- 100 grams of butter (about 1 stick)
- 2-3 lemons zested and juiced
- 2 eggs
Directions:
- In a saucepan, over med-low heat, combine butter, sugar, lemon juice, and lemon zest. Stir slowly until the butter is melted and the sugar has dissolved being sure not to boil (a low simmer is fine).
- In a separate bowl, crack the eggs and beat gently. You want the eggs beaten so when you add them to the sugar mixture that white blob thing in the egg is incorporated; you don't beat them, sometimes you get a white thing in the curd which looks unappetizing. And you can't have that in something so pretty.
- When the sugar is all dissolved and the mixture is scalding, get your whisk out and start stirring. As you're stirring, pour the eggs into the sugar mixture over the whisk; you want to stir quickly and constantly and pour over the eggs over the whisk so the eggs don't curdle (which is also a non-pretty feature we're working to avoid).
- Once everything is combined, you can stir more casually over low heat until the mixture is thick and luxurious. If you feel like it's not thick enough, remember that it will thicken more as it cools. This part should take 5-10 minutes.
- When you're satisfied with the consistency, remove from the heat and let it cool. When cool, enjoy!
After making my lemon curd, I crawled back in bed and went back to sleep. We had brunch at work the next day and I stirred plain Greek yogurt into the lemon curd and used it as a sauce for the fresh fruit and blueberry pancakes. Move over syrup, you've been replaced. Boom. Try a new industry Vermont.
