Lime curd

Lime curd is also known as lime butter, its basically a concoction of lime juice, zest, eggs, and lots of sugar to make a gloriously buttery yellow spread that tastes of intense lime. Every time I see and smell it, its like someone grated a lime in my face and made me lick the sweetened juice after. Its intensely sweet and sour and great on anything that deserves a hit of sweet/sour stuff. I've had it on toast, ice cream, in tarts, glazing on cakes and I personally know my Boyfriend ate the entire jar I made him in a few days of receiving it.

I have big plans of using this in a ton of cakes and things. So watch this space. I've been using it on ice cream, toast, rice cakes with peanut butter and lamingtons too! I have some cream cheese in the fridge so I'll be whipping up some cheesecake in the future I think!

Its very easy to make but its also a bit of a pain in the arse, since its easy to curdle the egg whites since they heat at a lower temperature than egg yolks. Then you get little white pieces of egg yolk throughout your spread that is very visually unappealing. A lot of recipes call for just egg yolks but then I dislike wasting egg whites and I always find myself stuck for ideas with what to do with it, there's only so many coconut meringues a girl can stand! I found this which details how to make a fool proof lemon curd recipe that never curdles. Its fantastic.

This recipe was stolen from Taste.com  since I can't find my original recipe for it.

Lime Curd

Uses: Making your significant other a type 2 diabetic

Ingredients:

100g unsalted cubed butter
1 cup of sugar
1 tbsp of lime zest
1/3 cup of strained lime juice
3 eggs, lightly beaten

Instructions:
1. Zap your limes in the microwave for at least 20 seconds, it helps release more juice. Then roll them on the kitchen bench while squishing them. It also helps release more juice!
2. Zest all your limes, I'm happy if I just zest the limes I needed to get a 1/3 of a cup of juice
3. Juice your limes. Strain so there are no floaters.
4. Cream the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add the lime zest. Beat in the eggs slowly. Add the lime juice last

Creamed!

Zested

5. Give it a mix. It'll start to curdle, don't worry that's completely normally. It'll fix itself up once you start cooking it.

Disgusting, curdled filth

 6. Put this into a bowl that fits just above a saucepan of water, double boiler is fine if you're fancy. If you're cheap like me, even a bowl that you're happy to lower the bowl in and out of water when it gets too hot.

Scoop off the thick foam that appears

Thicker damn you!

7.  Heat on a steady medium until the mixture thickens and coats the back of a spoon. If you can draw a line through the mixture steadily, its the right shade. It'll thicken further on standing. This could take a while. Alternatively, you can pour it straight into the saucepan and heat it directly since the creaming seems to really reduce the egg white coagulation rate.

Could be thicker, but good enough!