Lemons and sunshine

I thought I'd share another favourite recipe this weekend. Lemons are very popular in our house - lemon chicken with bacon bits (most requested tea round here) and lots of sweet lemon treats - lemon meringue, lemon surprise pudding, lemon cake...
The one I'm going to share today is a simple lemon curd. Lovely just with some fresh bread but great to use in other things as well.

Lemon curd

4 lemons
4 large eggs
8oz sugar
4oz butter (life is much easier if it's soft!)

Mix together the butter and sugar thoroughly.

Beat the eggs well and then add to the butter mixture.

Grate the zest of the lemons and squeeze the juice, add both to the mix and stir.

Microwave on high for 1 minute then stir thoroughly. Continue this, stirring each minute until the mixture is of a consistency to coat the back of the spoon. It will thicken as it cools.

If kept, covered, in the fridge we find this keeps for at least a week.

It is lovely on fresh bread but it's also delicious sandwiched in a lemon cake, or to fill small lemon tarts or, as Theo loves, in a cheesecake. He saw the lemon curd yesterday (I think he smelled it first in fact!), and decided he'd make us a cheesecake for pudding.

There's a theme coming through with Theo's preferred cooking - he likes bashing things with a hammer! He made a biscuit base with melted butter and oaty biscuit crumb and chilled it. For the topping he just mixed a large dollop of the lemon curd with a larger dollop of mascarpone cheese - this stage involved lots of tasting to get the proportions spot on! A good chill in the fridge and that was it.

I would have liked to show you a beautiful picture of it, but unfortunately Theo got there first...



He had a very generous portion!


It was delicious. Anyway, hope you're having a great weekend, we've finally got some sunshine, it's a beautiful morning here today.

So we're off to make the most of it and get a bit of fresh air.

Sally.