God's always got a custard pie up his sleeve.

After spending Christmas with Jesse's parents, we returned home with a car full of goods, including lemons from the tree in his parent's backyard. I used it often in cooking, and made wonderful lemon curd with a few lemons.

I don't have a picture of the finished product, nor do I have a picture of the sponge cake roll filled with lemon curd. Daaang yummy, but my idiotic self used my biggest baking sheet for the sponge cake, so I ended up with a super thin cake that rolled over itself multiple times instead of the standard thick cake rolled over a few times. Still yummy nonetheless! We had it for breakfast on a Sunday morning mmmm

Lemon Curd




2-3 lemons (preferably Meyer lemons, about 10 ounces)
1/4 tsp cornstarch*
1/4 cup sugar
4 eggs
6 tbsp unsalted butter

*cornstarch may be omitted unless you want to use the custard as a filling in a tart you want to brown

There are so many variations you can use to make curd, and I don't think this is the recipe I followed.. Maybe, I don't remember!! I copied and altered this recipe from my Chez Panisse Desserts cookbook. It actually is a Blood Orange Curd recipe that I copied, and you can subsitute the lemon for pretty much any citrus fruits! Just add a tbsp of lemon juice to whatever fruit you choose.

Wash the lemons and finely grate the peel into a non-corroding bowl. Juice the lemons, strain the juice into the bowl. Mix the cornstarch into sugar if using (this helps prevent lumps from forming when the cornstarch is cooked into the eggs). Put the eggs in a small non-corroding saucepan and whisk the sugar-cornstarch mixture into them. Stir in the juice-peel mixture. Don't be alarmed if it curdles, it will smooth out later. Cut the butter into several pieces and add to the mixture.

Cook over low heat. Once the butter melts, whisk constantly until smooth. Alternatively, stir constantly with a wooden spoon until the mixture coats the spoon. Remove from the heat and stir for a minute or two until the heat of the pan dissipates so the custard won't curdle on the bottom. Pour into a small container and chill.

As you can see in the second vLog, I strained the curd through a fine metal mesh strainer. I highly recommend doing so, for straining will smoothen the curd and eliminate the zest, along with any curdled egg bits.


I know y'all non-Californians are blanketed in snow, and this would be nothing to you guys but HEY ITS ARCATA OK. At sea level too! It was very wet snow that hardly stuck, but it lasted from late AM to late afternoon.