Lemonylicious Lemon Curd

I had seen lemon curd. I didn't know precisely what it was, but it looked like it would have promise. It's yellow, to start with. But not normal yellow. More like a something went wrong with the nuclear reactor shade of yellow. But I heard it was sweet, and I like lemon squares, so when I stumbled across a recipe, it seemed like perfect alignment of all the lemon stars. Lemon curd starts with lemons. Lots of lemons.

Lemons are juiced and zested and mixed with many, many, many eggs and sugar, which is heated over the stove until it thickens. Once that happens, it needs to be strained. If you strain it, you should probably avoid turning the burner on beforehand. See that bubbling there in the pan? Yeah... I'm pretty sure that's a no-no.

I wasn't initially sure why I was straining it. But I went along with it, because that's what the recipe said to do, and I tend to believe recipes, unless they're clearly wrong. This seemed legit, and the closer I got to the end, the more apparent the reasoning was. You see those ...um...chunky bits? Those, my friend, are scrambled eggs. In my lemon curd. See why it's usually a good idea to listen to the recipe, even though it seems silly? Because if you ignore it, you'll have chunky lemon curd.

I heated the now beautifully strained lemon curd and added the butter, then let it cool a bit. Once it was a bit cooler, I put it in these containers and into the fridge.

So what do you do with lemon curd? I made the lemon lavender scones from the Macrina cookbook and served both the scones and the lemon curd to some friends for brunch.