Foliosus

I wish that I had a photo of these to show; they were just too delicious, though, and didn’t last long enough. The addition of a little bit of almond meal to the crust gives them a complexity of flavor that plays very nicely with the clean tartness of the lemon curd.

Lemon curd is tricky

Lemon curd is a very difficult beast. It’s too easy for it to be off-balance: the butter, sugar or tartness from the lemons can easily dominate, and then it’s just good, not sublime like it can be. There are no hard and fast secrets for getting the balance right, either, as it depends entirely on the particular lemons you’re using. As their sugar levels vary, the amount of juice and sugar you’ll need to use to balance out the curd will change. This means that you should taste the curd while it’s cooking, so that you can balance it out at the last minute if it needs it.

The second tricky part to a good lemon curd is making it so that it sets properly, and doesn’t have those nasty little bits of egg white that cook too soon and gum it up. I came across a discussion of lemon curds online somewhere, and one of the participants had a suggestion which worked perfectly: that’s the basis of the recipe below. The secret is two-fold. First, you cream the butter and sugar like you’re making a cake. Second, you must stir the lemon curd constantly while it’s cooking. When you first put it on the heat it will be chunky. As you stir, it will go smooth. It will take several minutes for the transition to smoothness to start, but once it has started it will be quite rapid. This is when you have to taste it to correct the balance of flavors. Similarly, when it thickens it will happen very rapidly. The whole cooking process should take no more than 10–15 minutes.

Recipe

Crust

• ½ cup flour
• ½ almond meal
• ¼ confectioner’s sugar
• ½ melted butter

Curd

• ¼ cup butter, cut into pieces
• 1¼ cup sugar
• 4 eggs, lightly beaten
• ¾ cup lemon juice
• 1 tbsp. minced lemon zest

First, we prepare the crust:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F
2. Sift together the flower, almond meal and powdered sugar
3. Stir in the melted butter
4. Press into the bottom of an 8-inch baking pan
5. Bake for 20 minutes

While the crust is baking, let’s make the curd:

1. Cream the butter
2. Gradually beat in the sugar
3. Beat in the eggs
4. Mix in the lemon juice and lemon zest
5. Cook over a double-boiler, while stirring constantly
6. The curd will thicken: it is done when it coats the spoon you’re stirring with, and you can use your finger to draw a line through the curd on the spoon that stays

Now assemble the bars:

1. Pour the curd into the pre-baked crust
2. Return the bars to the oven for another 25 minutes
3. When baked, let cool to room temperature and then refrigerate
4. Before serving, cut into 2-inch squares and sprinkle with powdered sugar

I brought a pile of these into work and they vanished: they’re quite tasty.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.