Yum at Home: Lemon What??

Do you like to cook? Do you like to eat? Do you like to look at pictures of food and think about maybe making it sometime (but never actually make it)? Well, thens Yum at Home is for you. Relatively easy recipes, made from inexpensive ingredients, that are super delicious and sometimes healthy (but not always, because that would be boring).

I have some other great recipes on my old cooking blog, Failure Potatoes, so you should check that out too!

Today: let's make lemon curd!

This doesn't look like much but it's a jar of delicious. I promise.

Lemon what?? The name might make you think of cheese curds or curdled milk or a region of Afghanistan, but it's way more delicious than it sounds, I promise. If you've ever had lemon bars, lemon curd is the gooey stuff inside that made you want to murder your mother for another bite. It's a sweet, lemony, buttery spread that you put on almost anything and make it instantly fancier and more delicious. Here are some things you can do with lemon curd:

• Spread it on toast or biscuits
• Plop it onto vanilla ice cream
• Mix it into plain greek yogurt
• Make it into a fruit tart (bake a tart crust. spread with lemon curd. arrange fresh fruit in a decorative pattern. stuff your face.)

• Lick it off the spoon like a crazed animal
• Put it in adorable jars and give it to your friends for presents
• Put on a ski mask and steal the jars back from your friends so you can eat it all yourself

Okay at this point you're probably like, "give me the recipe, goddamnit, I don't need any more convincing," and you're right. So here it is.

You're going to need a lot of eggs and lemons. Don't worry, they sacrificed their lives for a good cause!

This is a super helpful lemon juicer because you can measure while you squeeze. Revolutionary.

Lemon Curd

Makes about 20 oz (enough to fill up a 16-oz/1-pint Mason jar and have a little left over)

(Adapted from the Meyer Lemon Squares recipe in Williams Sonoma's Essentials of Baking)

3 Large whole eggs

3 Egg yolks

(When you separate them, drop the whites into an airtight container to use for egg white omelettes and other healthy-people breakfasts)

3/4 Cup fresh lemon juice (6 fl oz/180 mL)

(The recipe is delicious with lemons and even more amazing with Meyer lemons, if you can find them. You'll need about 5 Meyer lemons or 4 regular lemons. Don't forget to do the lemon zest before you cut up the lemons and start juicing them!)

1 Cup granulated sugar (8 oz/250 g)
6 Tablespoons unsalted butter (3 oz/90 g), cut into 3/4-inch cubes
1 Teaspoon grated lemon zest

Place the eggs, egg yolks, lemon juice, and sugar into a bowl that can act as the top of a double boiler (some people have double boilers, some put a metal pan on top of a saucepan, and I live dangerously and put a plastic bowl on top of a saucepan. Whatever). Whisk these ingredients together until the sugar dissolves.

Place over barely-simmering water (don't let the bowl touch the water) and add the pieces of butter. Using a large spoon, stir constantly until the butter melts...

I usually get impatient and start smashing the butter against the side of the bowl.

...and keep stirring until the mixture thickens. It will take about 12 minutes. You'll be able to tell it's ready because it's thick enough to "coat the back of the spoon" (whatever that means), it reaches 160° F (71° C) on a thermometer (if you're awesome like me and have a kitchen thermometer), or basically you'll realize that it suddenly went from a liquid to a sort of pudding-like consistency. Mine didn't even reach 160° F (maybe this is an altitude issue), but it still thickened properly.

Here it is with the butter melted but still very liquidy. Not ready yet! Keep stirring.

Remove from over the water and strain the lemon curd through a medium-mesh sieve placed over a bowl.

This is what it will look like when thickened. The straining is necessary because you will get a few pieces of cooked egg white, and that's not a pleasant texture.

When you've finished straining the lemon curd (it helps to scrape a bit with a rubber spatula), stir in the lemon zest (bet you forgot about that stuff. I did, the last time I made this recipe!). At this point your lemon curd is ready to rumble and you can pour it into a jar, tupperware, or your face. Let it cool down to room temperature before sticking it in the fridge. You can keep lemon curd about a week or two in the fridge. I haven't tried freezing any, but maybe you could? Let me know!

Look at the cute little baby jar! I should give it away as a gift, right? That would be the nice thing to do. Or I could hide it away in the freezer for the next time a lemon curd craving hits...