Lemon Curd

I bought a bag of lemons for my marmalade experiment last weekend. I only used 2 and have 4 lemons left.

In the spirit of canning and jamming, I decided to make lemon curd.

Among the 6 canning books I borrowed from the library is one titled Jam It, Pickle It, Cure It: And Other Cooking Projects by Karen Solomon.

This book does not have a lot of jam recipes but it has a lot of other interesting projects. Like making your own crackers and marshmallow. It also has a section for curing meat and fish. We are not eating meat right now but I am really interested in the beef jerky recipe.

After the hiccup from last week's marmalade, I thought I'd be extra careful and do some recipe comparison.

This lemon curd is supposed to be something you can eat with a spoon or on top of a toast or scones, as you can see from the photo in the book below.

I have made lemon curd numerous times in the past through baking through Rose's Heavenly Cakes (RHC). The lemon curd recipe in RHC is really good but is not something that I could eat with a spoon. Even used within cake layers, it is pretty rich.

Karen Solomon's recipe looks to be more to my taste. Comparing Rose's and Karen's, Karen use only mostly whole eggs with only 1 egg yolk. Most of the lemon curd recipe out there (including Rose's) uses only egg yolks. This recipe also uses less sugar. I also compared the recipe with 2 other lemon curd recipes I found (I did borrow 6 cookbooks, :)). And verdict is Karen's recipe seems to be the least rich.

Conclusion: less egg yolks and sugar = less rich lemon curd = a happier me = let's make this!

Here is a mixture of eggs, sugar, and freshly squeezed lemon juice. Butter is not added yet - also something different in the recipe. But instead the mixture is warmed first before butter is added.

I did get a bit concerned whether it would get thick with less yolks and sugar. I thought the high ratio of egg yolks and sugar are the main contributor to the consistency of lemon curd.

Also, having been used to spoiled by Rose's detailed instruction, reading how I am supposed to warm the yolk, sugar, lemon juice mixture led me to so many questions. How warm is warm? What's the temperature supposed to be? 70 degrees is warm but so is 80 or 85 degrees...

As it turns out, I should not have any doubts, because ta-da, lemon curd.

And it is really good. Zesty and tangy with just a hint of sweetness. It is the kind of lemon curd that I could eat with a spoon, or slather onto homemade Whole Wheat Bread, as in the photo below.

I will not be posting the recipe for this as I followed it exactly. I did find a similar recipe out on epicurious. If you are interested in checking out this book, see if your local library carries it. Mine does so yours might. I have since ordered it from Amazon and look forward to making other recipes from it.