Lemon curd is a delicious addition to tarts, icing, and baked goods. If you make a lot of meringue-based buttercreams, or even a lot of white cakes, you’ll eventually have a day that you have a lot of extra egg yolks. This quick and easy small-batch lemon curd recipe can be made with leftover egg yolks and used as a cake filling or to flavor meringue buttercream.
This article includes affiliate links that will pay a commission if they’re used to purchase something. As an Amazon associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.
(For an article about fixing a broken meringue buttercream, click here)
Curds can be made with either yolks alone or a combination of yolks and whole eggs.
Using only yolks will make a curd that can be spread like preserves, but isn’t thick like buttercream.
Thin layers of it in torted cakes will give them a nice bright citrus flavor.
You can also use citrus curds as a flavoring for meringue buttercreams, or on cookies or in tarts. Read this article about how to make lemon tarts using curd here: Lemon tart recipe
Lemon Curd
Ingredients
Method
- Whisk all ingredients in a pan over medium to high heat until they thicken, stirring constantly to prevent hot spots at the bottom of the pan.
- Heat just to the boiling point, then remove from the heat and strain into a small container.
- Store the curd in the fridge until you need to use it. It will thicken when it cools off, but the all-yolks version stays relatively soft.
- To make lime or orange curd, substitute lime or reduced orange juice for the lemon, and decrease the sugar to ½ cup.
For an article about what happens if you don’t get all of the yolk out of the egg whites, click here.
Tips for making lemon curd.
- Stir the curd constantly as it heats up. If you let the egg sit on hot spots in the pan it will cook, and you’ll end up with a lot more cooked pieces than you want.
- Stir the curd in a figure-8 motion to move it around in the pan and disperse the heat through the mix better.
- Make sure to have a strainer ready to pour the cooked curd into to strain out pieces of cooked egg.
- Refrigerate the curd to thicken it, and store it in a container in the refrigerator. Use within a week or so of making it.
- Add the curd to icing to flavor it, use it as a filling in cakes, or put it in tart shells as a filling.
Related articles:
