There is little that can't be solved by a good slavering of home-made lemon curd. I find it has more zing than shop bought stuff, and it's pretty simple to make. It's a natural partner to meringue as well, partly it's a great flavour combination, and partly as it allows you to use both parts of the egg.
Lemon curd is one of those things that ideally you can make blind-fold, and it allows you to quickly turn a basic sponge into a luxury treat. I did a lemon meringue roulade, however I'm going to do the 3 core ingredients separately as "Basics", then a final post with assembly instructions.
Lemon Curd - Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 lemons (un-waxed)
- 120g caster sugar
- 3 egg yolks
- 60g butter
1) This can be done either in a saucepan, or over a bain-marie if you are being careful. Key is that you do not want to boil the mixture when you heat it, but rather gently cook the egg yolks until the mixture thickens.1a) If you are using a saucepan, place the egg yolks and caster sugar into the saucepan
1b) If you are using a bain-marie, place the egg yolks and caster sugar into a heatproof bowl
2) Zest the lemons, adding the zest to the bowl/saucepan. If you were being quick, you could skip this step, and use pre-bought juice for step 3 (it's approximately 30ml of lemon juice per lemon), however the oils in the zest give an extra zing to the curd, which makes it far better than shop-bought stuff!
3) Juice the lemons, and also add the juice to the mixture (I use a reamer, and then pass the juice through a sieve to remove any seeds or pith that tries to get in)4) Prepare your butter by chopping it up, and have it ready
4) Gently heat the mixture while whisking gently (either over a low heat, or the bain-marie)5) After 7-8 minutes it should begin to thicken. The official thickness you are looking for is "coats the back of a spoon". What this means is that if you dip a spoon in, there should be a layer left when you pull it out, and you can draw a line through it with your finger.
6) Once it has thickened, take it off the heat
7) Add the butter in, and whisk until it has fully melted
8) Decant the curd into a jar, and leave it to cool.
This recipe will provide more than enough for a cake, or batch of cakes (I use about half, to two-thirds of this when I make lemon meringue cupcakes, or a lemon meringue roulade)