Quick Lemon Curd

I have an awful lot of affection for old cookbooks. I'm not talking antique Mrs Beeton era books, more the weird 1970's '100 Food Processor Recipes' style books.

Not even joking

I love the way recipes veer from practical and tasty, to wildly, offensively wrong. You'll get a good, basic recipe for cheese sauce, then they'll tell you to pour it over a curried banana. Again, not joking.

Thinking about it, I'm going to have to devote a whole separate post to just how much I love old cookbooks (Note to self: do that), but the pointI'm making this time is I got this excellent recipe for quick lemon curd from an old 'Recipes to use with your Microwave' book. It was probably one of the only edible things it featured, but was totally worth it.

You will need:

250g sugar
2 lemons, zest and juice
50g butter
2 eggs.

Put the sugar, butter, zest and juice into a microwave proof bowl, and heat on high until the butter has melted (probably between 30 seconds and a minute). Remove, and whisk in the eggs until smooth. Put back in the microwave and cook for a further minute on high, then remove and whisk again.

Continue cooking for a minute each time and then whisking until the mix has been cooked for a total of five minutes. Strain it, and store in sterilised jars. This quantity will make about a pound of curd.

You can try this with other citrus fruits, but remember they have to be as sharp as the lemons. I made orange curd once and it was waaay too sweet, but grapefruit works quite well.

Another thing you can try making is ice cream. The eggs and sugar in this make it a good base for ice cream, so all you need to do is mix it through some lightly whipped cream or (as I prefer) creme fraiche. The high sugar content means it stays quite smooth, so you don't necessarily need an ice cream maker, just whisk it together and stick it in the freezer.

I'm going to leave this batch as it is though, and have it nice and simple on my curried banana.