Lemon-Lime (and a little Orange) Curd

Lemon curd is a fantastic idea. Sweet, tart, and a beautiful rich yellow color make it highly appealing, and I figured homemade could only surpass expectations. Well it did, and it’s sure tasty. The only problem is, I don’t really have a good use for it. It’s wildy delicious when licked off the end of a spoon, but spread it on bread? No thanks, too sweet. Perhaps I need to find a good shortbread recipe or cake to use it as the filling for. As it is, I made it a couple weeks ago and have barely touched the stuff. And they say to only keep it for three weeks or so, so I better figure it out quick.

The basic ingredients, eggs, butter, sugar, lemon, will spoil without the preservatives added to supermarket-bound varieties.

When choosing a recipe, I came across several that asked for whole eggs, and several just egg yolks. All used plenty of butter and sugar, and both juice and zest of lemons. As I had lemons, limes, AND and orange on my counter, I went with the zest from all three, and juice from the first two only. The orange juice didn’t seem tart enough. Also, as lemon curd is a British phenomenon, most of the recipes out there are in metric measurements. Mostly out of the sheer laziness of not wanting to convert from metric, I went with Alton Brown’s recipe, with some variations from various other sources.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with it!

Lemon-Lime (and Orange) Curd

• 5 egg yolks
• 1 cup sugar
  
• 1/3 C. sour citrus juice, plus zest
• 1 stick butter, cut into pats and chilled

Mix egg yolks, sugar, and citrus juice and zest in a blender. When combined, pour mixture into a small pan and heat over low heat, whisking constantly, until it turns light yellow and coats the back of the spoon. Remove from heat and whisk in the pats of butter one at a time. Throw it in a clean jar and cover the top with a layer of plastic wrap directly touching the curd.

Voila! Delicious stuff that I don’t know what to do with!