Home made lemon curd is so much better than the one you can buy in the shops. If you have a surplus of eggs in the house and some lemons lurking at the bottom of the fridge, it’s worth making. This lovely colourful preserve will also surprise your loved ones as a thoughtful gift they can use daily.
Ingredients for Lemon Curd
- 4 lemons
- 4 eggs
- 4 egg yolks
- 300g white sugar either caster or granulated
- 200g butter – I use salted but unsalted will be fine
Method
Zest the lemons. You can use a grater but I prefer a lemon zester even though I dislike single use gadgets in my kitchen. Then squeeze the juice out. I pass the juice through a sieve but then I am paranoid about lemon pips.
Get a heavy bottomed sauceapn. Add the eggs, egg yolks and sugar and beat together until the sugar had dissolved. Then add the butter, lemon juice and zest and stir well over a low low heat on the hob. Stir constantly until the mixure has thickened and resembles lemon curd. This can take a few minutes but keep going. If the mixture starts to curdle then pop the saucepan into a sink filled with cold water to bring the temperature down. Should you be really cautious, you could make the lemon curd in a glass bowl over a pan of simmering water. I’m a bit braver then that and find it works fine using a good solid saucepan and a low heat.
Decant the lemon curd into sterilised jars, seal and keep in the fridge. I find this make 2 jam jars full as per the photograph.
Tip – to sterilise jars I run them through the dishwasher. Or if you don’t have a dishwasher, you can boil the jars and lids in a big pan of boiling water for a few minutes.