Friday, March 23, 2007

Lemon Curd: First Edition

I was going to make Pierre Herme's lemon cream, and go the whole hog with 10.5 ounces butter. But I chickened out. I looked at other recipes and most of them are 1-2 ounces butter max for roughly the same amount.

This is a combination of the half a dozen recipes I have.

Ingredients

Zest of 2 lemons
3/8 cup lemon juice--1/4 and 2 tablespoons, or to make it easier, 90g
100g sugar
60g butter
2 eggs

Prepare a bain-marie.

I rubbed the zest into the sugar, then poured the juice in before whisking in the eggs. Do this in a heatproof bowl, preferably stainless steel, because the next step is:

Set the bowl over the pot of boiling water and continue whisking until it is thick enough to coat a spoon.

Remove from heat and cool in a icebath--you could just leave it at room temperature, but it's quicker this way. Stir in the butter. Run through a sieve/chinois--this is important.

Bottle/Jar and store.

Notes:

I run it through the sieve after adding the butter because it is easier--before that, it's too viscous, IMHO, but I plan to try that as well.

This freezes quite well (tastes like sorbet frozen), so you can make larger batches--this one makes a very small batch--if you have a big enough bowl and pot for the bainmarie.