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When life hands you lemons, make lemon butter!

We still have lots of lemons on the tree even after I made a batch of preserved lemons and since we also have lots of eggs I thought I'd wip up a batch of lemon butter. Some places its called lemon curd and other lemon honey - but they all seem to be a very similar recipe; Eggs, butter, lemon juice and a bit of sugar.

Its really good on toast, can be used in a filling for lemon meringue tarts and is great over ice cream... or with a spoon straight out of the jar.... Yuuuuuuummmmmm!

I like the traditional New Zealand way of making Lemon butter so here is the recipe straight out of the book but doubled so I could make even more yummy lemon butter!

Here's what I did...


 
In a double boiler or a bowl over a simmering pot of water melt 120g of butter with 1/2 cup of sugar and 2 cups of lemon juice.
 


When the sugar has dissolved and the butter melted crack four eggs into a bowl... and whisk them before adding to the butter/sugar/juice mixture. Some people add the grated zest of the lemons at this point. My lemons weren't looking so fantastic so I didn't this time.
 

Stir continuously until the mixture thickens up like a custard. I tend to keep going until it coats the back of the spoon thickly. 


 
Take the bowl off the pot, add some more water and bring to a simmer. Sterilise your jars by washing them in hot soapy water and then rinsing them before immersing them in the hot simmering water for a good 5 minutes.
 


Pour the hot mixture into hot jars and seal, making sure there is no sticky residue on the tops of the jar that might break the airtight seal that you need.


I let my mixture get too hot and the egg started cooking before it had incorporated itself into the juice, sugar and butter mixture so keep a close eye on it when you put the egg in. You can see the bits of egg white and cooked yolk in the jars. It didn't alter the taste but doesn't add to the beauty end product either! I'm not sure if it will alter the storage time of the lemon butter either... Ill let you know (if it lasts that long!)

Score card:
Green-ness: 5/5 for making your own preserves with your own produce and recycling some jars! 
Frugal-ness: 5/5 for the above reasons as I only paid for the sugar!!
Time cost: About 1/2 an hour.
Skill level: Stirring... for a while...
Fun-ness: Good Yummy Fun!

Comments

Kim said…
Looks so yummy! will have to give it a try. How long does it keep for?
Kim said…
Looks so yummy! will have to give it a try. How long does it keep for?
Practical Frog said…
I'm not sure... It gets eaten up too quickly in our house! Does anyone else know? - K x
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