Lemon Curd

Every morning when I’m eating breakfast I scan through my Google Reader to see what sort of recipes were posted overnight. I usually don’t have time to read all the posts before I leave for work, but it’s fun to glance at a few of them. Nearly every morning over the last week there has been at least one recipe for caramel-apple bars. Apparently everyone is ready for fall and while I’m sure I’ll jump on the caramel-apple bandwagon soon, we have a lot of wedding cupcakes to talk about first!

I’ll put up a cupcake recipe later this week, but an essential ingredient for the Lemon-Blueberry Cupcakes is lemon curd so this seems like a good place to start. Of course this creamy, tart lemon curd can be used for many things besides filling cupcakes. I love it over some fresh strawberries or blueberries, you could also make a simple graham cracker crust and fill it with lemon curd, or use it in some of my favorite Lemon-Blueberry Crumb Bars. Eating it by the spoonful is definitely an option too!

Lemon Curd

Ingredients*

1/4 cup butter
3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
1 tbl. lemon zest

Directions

Melt the butter in the top of a double boiler. Beat in the eggs and sugar, then add the lemon juice. Cook, stirring consistently for about 15 minutes until the mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a wooden spoon.
If necessary, strain through a fine mesh strainer to remove any lumps then stir in the lemon zest. Press a piece of plastic wrap onto the surface of the curd to prevent a skin from forming then chill in the refrigerator until cool.

*I used Organic Valley brand butter and eggs for this recipe and it turned out wonderfully, more about the awesomeness of Organic Valley to come in the next post! I also recommend using organic lemons, I find that organic fruit tends to be more flavorful than conventional fruit.

Makes: Enough to fill about 24 cupcakes