Add Some Zest To Spring With Our Lemon Curd Recipe
Posted by The Wares Team on 25th Feb 2020
If you’re well and truly fed up with winter now, with those long grey days and
those never-ending storms and bouts of incessant rain, then you need something
zingy to cheer you up. Of course, Spring isn’t really that far away now and the
snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils are all popping out their colourful faces in
our gardens at the moment - a promise of the good things to come in the weeks
ahead.
If you need something bright, cheerful and supremely yummy to cheer you up, our
blog post for today should be just the ticket. We’re going to show you how to
make unbelievably scrumptious lemon curd - a real treat that never fails to
delight. So grab some jam jars, and let’s get to it…
Our Favourite Lemon Curd Recipe
The beauty of lemon curd is that the process of making it is pretty simple and
quick. Whilst you can find lemon curd recipes that include pulped apple to bulk
it out a bit, we prefer the traditional approach. Here’s the recipe…
Ingredients:
4 large unwaxed lemons
4 large, free-range eggs
375g caster sugar
250g unsalted butter
Method:
Chop the butter into cubes and allow to stand to bring it to room temperature.
Zest and juice all of the lemons and set aside for a moment.
Whisk the eggs in a large pan and then add all of the other ingredients and
heat on a medium setting, whisking continuously with a hand whisk until the
mixture thickens, This should take around 6-8 minutes.
Turn the heat down and continue whisking for another minute or so.
Remove from the heat and pour into clean, sterilised glass jars. Place a wax
disc on the top of each jar and seal the glass jars whilst the lemon curd is
hot. Once cooled completely, label your jam jars and store in a cool place.
It’s important to remember that lemon curd is not the same as jam in terms of
how long it will keep. Whilst you might have jam jars filled with jam from
months ago that are still perfectly good, lemon curd only keeps for a matter of
weeks and it needs to be kept in a cool place, or even in the fridge. That’s why
most recipes only specify sufficient ingredients to fill one or two
standard-sized jam jars. It’s better to make lemon curd in smaller quantities,
but more often, rather than doing a really big batch.
Ideas For Using Your Lemon Curd
Now that you’ve got a few jam jars filled with delicious lemon curd, it’s time
to think about how to use it all up. Of course, lemon curd is sublime spread on
hot, buttered toast and we recommend that you make sure you use plenty of your
lemon curd stash in precisely this way! It’s also brilliant stirred through
Greek yoghurt, spooned onto ice cream, and smeared on pancakes. If you want to
use some to bake with or to create something fancy for dessert, however, we’ve
got some really special ideas for doing just that.
One of our favourite ideas for using lemon curd is to create a very
sophisticated looking lemon mousse dessert. Just whip some double cream until
it’s standing in stiff peaks, then divide it in half and fold in some lemon
curd into one half of the whipped cream, to spread the flavour through it. Take
some tall sundae glasses and spoon some lemon curd into the bottom. Next spoon
in some of the lemon and whipped cream mixture, and finally spoon in some of
the plain whipped cream. Top with some fresh or frozen blueberries, for a
simple dessert that looks every bit as if it’s come out of the kitchen of a
fancy restaurant.
Our next idea is just as simple and will have you wondering why you’ve never
thought of doing it before! Simply take some ready-made puff pastry and cut out
circles. Press a smaller cutter into the pastry circles, to form an inner ring
- but don’t press all the way through. Score the centre of each case, and then
bake for 15 minutes. One cooked, use a knife to carefully remove the central
piece of pastry to leave a hole in the centre of each vol au vent. Sprinkle a
little icing sugar over each case and then carefully spoon the lemon curd in.
These are guaranteed to be party favourites, and are so simple to make!
Our final suggestion for an easy bake using lemon curd is lemon curd muffins.
Just use your regular muffin base mix, leave out some of the sugar and replace
with lemon curd, stirring it through the mixture to ensure the flavour spreads
through the muffin mix. You could also add some white chocolate chips to the
muffin mix for a really decadent treat!
Are you a lemon curd addict? Share your recipes with us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram - we’d love to hear from you!