Lemon curd

Lemon curd. When I was a kid, lemon curd in the fridge meant that it was around a week after the Church fete, since that's as long as it ever lasted.

We have two lemon trees in our backyard, and they are absolutely chock full of lemons at the moment - one of them is literally bending under the weight. The photo at right is the best one I can find of it, that's just a tiny little section, and as you can see covered in lemons rapidly ripening.

So, obviously, it's time to make the lemon curd. Now, there's some awfully complicated recipes on the internet, and I think I will in future simply work from a ratio - one block butter, half a bag of caster sugar, and 4 each of eggs and lemons. That makes around a litre of curd, and I can scale up or down as necessary.

The instructions make it sound dead simple - whack it all in a saucepan and stir it till its done. Like all things, it's not that simple. Well, it is, but you have to stir it *constantly* to avoid it burning to the bottom of the saucepan. You need to make sure it doesn't boil, since apparently that can contribute to the white egg floaties. Although I'm not sure about that, since this last batch didn't boil, and it still had white egg floaties. Perhaps they would've been worse had I let it boil. Who knows. But in reality, what you're in for is a fairly uneventful 20 minutes and cramp in your arm, while it thickens.

I had intended to make half the batch lemon and passionfruit curd after discovering a back of last summer's passionfruit in the freezer, but having dissected half a dozen of them and sat the flesh and seeds in a bowl to defrost a bit, I promptly bottled the curd and completely forgot. Oh well, next time.

Due to the concurrent glut of kumquats we're experiencing, I'm toying with the idea of having a go at a lemon and kumquat curd of some kind. Not sure though, suspect you would need to up the sugar, as the kumquats are quite tart - too much so to really eat them raw. Some other time, when I'm feeling a bit more confident, I think.