The Princess and her brother (aka The Eating Machine) were here with me today while Elery and their Dad worked on some plumbing at their house. Brother went out to see if he could catch minnows and The Princesswanted to cook something new. I'd picked up some Meyer lemons (about half the size of the ones Beachlily sent me, but still good) and suggested that we make lemon curd. Having never even heard of lemon curd, she was instantly intrigued.

So, start zesting those lemons, kid!

Now squeeze 'em. We need 3/4 cup of lemon juice...

The lemon "stuff", a stick of butter and some sugar all go into the microwave, while The Princess beats up the eggs. The eggs go into the hot ingredients, and get whisked up well.

A couple rounds of zapping, then whisking, and we got this:

In less than 10 minutes we had nearly two pints of sunny yellow deliciousness. We did do some tasting with a spoon, but now we're thinking about what we really want to do with it, maybe as a filling for donuts or a dip for ginger cookies. Yum.

We all had a little bit swirled into some softened homemade vanilla ice cream for dessert, but there's still a pint left to look forward to. Thanks, Colleen, from The Princess!

Lemon Butter (Colleen)

4oz butter (NOT margarine)
3/4 cup lemon juice (about 3 lemons' worth)
all the rind from the lemons, grated
1 cup sugar (I use superfine)
4-5 eggs, thoroughly beaten

Put butter, sugar, lemon juice and lemon rind into a micro-safe bowl. Cook on high about 3 minutes, stirring halfway through. Butter should be melted and sugar dissolved. Beat in eggs and microwave in 30-second bursts until it thickens, about 2 minutes. Whisk after each burst. Store in refrigerator to prolong the shelf life, which is short.

Makes about 3 cups, maybe less.

Sneaky notes from Colleen:
If you are making a LOT of this, for gifts, etc, I peel the rind off with a peeler and drop it into the blender. Then cut off the white pith with a paring knife. Making sure there are no seeds, drop lemon flesh into blender. Whizz it up until the rind is pulverised. You should end up with about 1 cup of juice/rind mix per batch, to account for the rind and aeration. You can double or triple the recipe, just use a bigger bowl and adjust the times.

I also use the blender to whizz the eggs. If they are not totally beaten, you can get little white strings from the egg white which don't look great.

If you overcook it and it separates, beat up an extra egg. Gradually mix separated (sounds much better than curdled, doesn't it?) mixture into egg. Repeat if necessary.

It did take 5 Meyer lemons, they are much smaller at the store than the ordinary lemons. We didn't have superfine sugar so we just used plain old cane sugar and it worked just fine too.

Annie