martha's lemon curd

it must have been about two and a half years ago by now. jason and i hadn't been together too long and we had just started having dinners and wine and cheese nights with our other foodie friends. i was bringing dessert and decided i wanted angel food cake with lemon curd and raspberries.

now i had no idea what lemon curd really was. how it was made. what it was made of. i just knew how good it was. i remember the mission we went on to find it - finally the third grocery store had it. $10 for a cup. or something equally as ridiculously expensive. so we skipped it.

that was also back when i thought cooking was painstaking. difficult. only for people who knew what they were doing. let's be honest here. back then, i was a 25 year old who had lived on my own for 2+ years. i had cheerios and cheese omelets for dinner (which i still can only manage to fold over without totally destroying half the time). lemon curd? really? i was not yet that girl.

now flash forward almost three years. and my list of cooking projects is a mile long. sure, i should have seen it coming with my foodie parents. but honestly, it's as big a shock to me as it is to you.

so the first thing i did when i made my lemon curd?
poured it over some angel food cake. and it was mighty good. especially the next night with strawberries.

lemon curd
from martha stewart's cooking school

4 large eggs
6 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
finely grated zest of 2 lemons
3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cold

1. whisk together the eggs and yolks in a small sauce pan. add sugar and lemon juice. cook over medium low heat whisking constantly until it's thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, about 10 minutes.
2. remove from heat and gradually stir in the butter. be sure to fully incorporate each bit before adding the next.
3. strain through a fine strainer (to get out any bits of cooked egg) and refrigerate at least 2 hours before using. keeps in the refrigerator about 10 days.