Lemon Curd is a piece of Pith

I thought I would do something a little different today as I realised I had a few extra eggs in the fridge that needed using and a big stack of sugar in the cupboard that was ripe. Don't tell me I shouldn't keep my sugar in a stack, I know food. So I thought I would bust out some old family favourites that my family actually never made. I'm sure some family did, somewhere, however I am not aware of them or anything more about them, so please keep your questions about them to a minimum.

A favourite recipe and food of mine in recent years has been Lemon Curd. Living in Coburg is a lemon-lover's delight as there is pretty much a lemon tree in the yard of every house. This was a piece of brilliant urban planning by the Lemon Council of Australia, who in 1958 forced every second house to plant a lemon tree in the front yard and every other house to plant one in their back yard. As it turns out, this stroke of citrusy genius has meant that I will never be short of lemons ever again. Seriously, I sometimes come home and there is a shopping bag full of lemons on my porch with no note or indication as to which neighbour may have dropped them off. It's great.

Anyway, as I was saying, I made Lemon Curd. The word "curd" is weird isnt it? Don't let it put you off. Just so you know, this recipe contains only Lemon juice, lemon rind, egg yolks and sugar. The awesome kitchen tool of the day is this thing my sister got me on to, called a Microplane. I cannot recommend it highly enough. It gets only the yellow, tasty, zest off the lemon without taking the pith (the white bitter bit, not a person with a lisp trying to say piss). Microplane haven't paid me to promote this product, I just think its an excellent bit of kitchen gear.

So what is Lemon Curd? Lemon Curd is a delicious, sweet, zesty gloop, like Lemon Butter but simpler and in my opinion, better. I like to eat it on those little pikelet things that you buy ready-made from the supermarket and then throw in the toaster. The beauty of this is that it's pith easy and pretty much always turns a good result.

You need:
Zest of one lemon
100ml Lemon Juice
1 Cup of Castor sugar
4 egg yolks (keep the white as we will be making mini pavlovas tomorrow, which requires 4 egg whites)

First step is the separate the egg yolks from the egg whites. However you do this, keep the whites clean. If there is any yolk in the egg whites, the Pav recipe we will do later on will NOT work.

Mix the egg yolks with the sugar in a bowl until it resembles cake icing. Then put it in a small saucepan, throw in the zest and lemon juice and heat over a low/medium heat, stirring constantly until it just starts to bubble (should take about 5 minutes) TIP: DO NOT speed this step up by turning up the heat because it will cook the egg yolks and make the mixture taste like lemony scrambled egg, which is gross. And you will have to chuck it out, which is not the point of this exercise at all.

Once it has just bubbled, take it off the heat and let it cool. Pour it into a couple of clean (sterilised preferably) jars and put one in the fridge for you and one by the door to take to your Mum's place. Good on you.

TOMORROW! Mini Pavlovas to have with Lemon Curd.