Curd

I love a good curd. Lemon is the king, of course, but this weekend I have also made gooseberry and rhubarb.

The gooseberry involved the following -

Stew 2lb of goosberries in 2floz water until soft. The original recipe says to top and tail them, but since you then press them through a sieve I really do consider this to be a waste of time.
Press through a sieve and place the resultant puree in a bowl with 3 beaten eggs, 2oz butter and 1lb sugar. Mix well, then place over a saucepan of boiling water. Cook like this until thick - mine took an hour and even then was not the thick consistency I would expect from a citrus curd. But it will do.

I used this to fill a cake which I topped with elderflower buttercream. Very delicious.

Then I decided to try rhubarb. I had some rhubarb syrup - quite a lot of it actually - made according to this recipe. This syrup makes a mean rhubarb and ginger martini but there are only so many one can drink (on weeknights - one) and so I decided to try and curd it up.

Because it was already full of sugar, I didn't add any. I put a cup and a half of the syrup in a bowl over boiling water, with 4 beaten eggs and 4oz butter. This one didn't even thicken as much as the gooseberry but it is still passable and will be excellent in cakes or stirred through yogurt.

In terms of colour, the gooseberry came out slightly green but the rhubarb is unfortunately a shade of pinkish grey. I think the combination of yellow eggs and heat killed off all the lovely pink colour the syrup has.

Trying to decide what to curdify next. I blended up some strawberries today for a cake, which sparked my imagination, but I am enjoying eating them as strawberries too much to waste them in another recipe just yet.