My parents retired years ago and moved to Panama, and they have a lovely spot up in the mountains with a lively social community of ex-pats. Part of that social community is, naturally, food-driven. I know of Jolene's famous coffee cake because my dad is a big fan. My mom, a marvelous cook, has enjoyed cooking up a big spread for her ladies' luncheon or book club. Food gets traded for errands or given as gifts during the holidays. One of Mom's best bartering tools is her lemon curd. It's bright and tangy and worth a trade for a bottle of salsa or a coffee cake.
A couple of weeks ago, I realized that we had a surplus of limes and I wrote her to get the recipe. It turns out that the recipe is versatile enough to use lemons or limes and a lime curd was a speedy virtual ticket back to the Florida Keys where I'd recently sampled more than my share of Key lime pie.
I have ideas about how wonderful this would taste with grapefruit juice, but maybe you'll give it a go and let me know? This stuff is good on all kinds of things: rolled pancakes and crepes, scones, toast (extra special with a spread of cream cheese!), biscuits, and cookies. My Slow Cooker Peach Butter has the same versatility. You can add lemon curd to a shortbread cookie for a thumbprint-style cookie that was perfect with tea or coffee. Look for that recipe soon.
Full disclosure: you are supposed to cook this up over a double boiler. My mom said so. Did I listen to my mom? No. I have a lazy streak. If you feel like you are going to walk away from this and empty the dishwasher and then tell some kid to stop jumping off of the furniture, go the double boiler method and ignore the dishwasher. What I did was to whisk like crazy when adding the lemon/egg mixture to the saucepan and then *never*stop*stirring* until the curd was set and coated the back of the wooden spoon. You know what this means, right? When the back of the spoon is coated it means that when you pull the spoon out of the mixture and turn it over, you can run a finger down the center of the back of the spoon and get a defined separation that doesn't ooze back together. You can do this. You'll thank yourself for a week when you have this treat in the fridge.
Recipe
Mom's Lemon Curd
Ingredients
- 3 large eggs
- ½ cup lemon juice (fresh squeezed)
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 teaspoon lemon zest (from ~2 lemons)
- ¼ cup salted butter
Instructions
- In a heavy saucepan, melt butter over medium heat.
- While butter is melting, whisk together lemon juice and eggs.
- Add sugar to butter and stir to incorporate.
- Whisking vigorously, add lemon and egg mixture to the sugar mixture. Continue to stir over medium heat until the curd coats the back of a wooden spoon. Remove from heat.
- Pour curd through a mesh strainer. Stir the zest into the curd and store in the refrigerator tightly covered.
Nutrition facts are sometimes provided below and are calculated using an online calculator. With specific brands of ingredients and additions, omissions, or substitutions the nutrition facts may change. We encourage you to use your own nutrition facts caculator to obtain the most accurate nutrition facts for your meal.
Nutrition Facts
Please let me know if you give this a try! I'd love to hear if you experiment with another citrus variation. I mean, blood orange curd... swoon! Also, if you know how to get the kids to stop jumping on the furniture just come and save us. I'll pay you in curd.
Rocky says
Yummy