House gifts for Summer Visitors: this means YOU. Quick Lemon Curd Makes Everybody Happy

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lemon curd for breakfast

OK.  You know the drill.  You get a quick invite to come to the beach for the weekend.  Sure you could take a bottle of wine,  but hey.  You’ll be spending the night.  There’s breakfast.  You can make a huge puckery contribution with a small jar of your own home made lemon curd.

Or should you get really bold,  you could take a pint, and make a lemon curd pie on the spot, using a graham cracker crust,  the lemon curd you bought and a flourish of whipped cream on the top.  You want to talk about a product that pays big dividends.  Lemon curd is it.

And let me tell you.  No commercial product can come close to the home made version.  Especially when it was made with your own two hands.  Put it up in sterile jars, tie a ribbon around its neck.  It’s a party.

Now if you happen to live in Arizona, Florida, or California,  you can start by picking lemons from your backyard tree.

And, as I learned 20+ years ago when I first started converting recipes to the microwave,  almost any recipe you ever saw that said “make in a double boiler” is faster and more foolproof when made in the microwave.  Yes,  you have to stand their and whisk the mixture every minute to keep it from curdling.  But hell.  You had to stand at the stove and stir anything made in the double boiler.

The only risk with a microwave for a pudding or custard, is that the heat starts from the inside out, so you have to pull the product out every 30 seconds to a minute and whisk.  Otherwise,  you’re gonna wind up with scrambled eggs and we don’t want that, now do we?

Quick Lemon Curd

makes about 3 1/2 pint jars

1 cup white sugar
pinch sea salt
3 large eggs
1 cup fresh lemon juice + grated zest of three lemons
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted

In a microwave-safe bowl, whisk together the sugar,salt and eggs until smooth. Stir in lemon juice, lemon zest and butter. Cook in the microwave for one minute intervals, whisking after each minute until the mixture is thick enough to coat the back of a metal spoon, about 5 minutes. Remove from the microwave, and pour into small sterile jars. Seal and store for up to three weeks in the refrigerator.

lemons on your backyard tree

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