lovely lemon curd

image from pinterest

 the greengrocers had piles of lemons and limes  for £1 last week, so i couldn't resist making a big batch of lemon curd. I had been wanting to try making a desert from Annabel Lagbeins book 'the free range cook' - which is a current favourite in our house, she mixes home made lemon curd with whipped cream and sandwiches it into a choux pastry ting with sliced strawberries. i did make it but it was all eaten before i had chance to take a photo! so instead here is annabels recipe for lemon curd, you can buy the book here - it is fab!

lemon curd

375g caster sugar

220g diced butter

finely grated zest of 1 lemon

juice of about 6 lemons

6 eggs

you are supposed to make this in a bain marie but i am a lay wotsit and made it in a pan on a very low heat!

place the butter, sugar, lemon juice and zest in a pan or bain marie and heat gently till the butter has melted. whisk the eggs and stir them in , cook gently storing all the time till the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon - it is ready when you can draw a line along the back of the spoon and it doesn't fill back in with liquid. - it takes about 5mins.

remove from the heat, and pour it through a sieve into sterilised jars (i think this is worth doing as it gets rid of any scramble bits and also of the eggy bits known in our house as egg bogies!!)

slather onto buttered toast, or fold in to cream, it makes a fab dessert spooned into pastry tart shells , or dolloped onto a shortbread biscuit with a scoop of creme fraiche and a tumble of raspberries.