Citrus Curds! Macarons!
A side effect of all my macaron making is that I end up with a bunch of egg yolks. I’ve been freezing them because I hate to waste perfectly good food and after a while I end up with a giant bag of yolks. What do you do with egg yolks? Make lemon curd! I decided to experiment a little tried a variety of citrus fruits like key lime, grapefruit and blood orange. They all worked beautifully, with the blood orange being my favorite. I had a batch of (successful!) macaron shells just waiting to be filled with something so this seemed like a perfect fit.
I’ve made lemon curd before, from an Ina Garten recipe and while the flavor was delicious, I wasn’t too keen on the texture. It seemed like it was too loose, (for macarons at least) and her recipe calls for a whole egg, which defeats the purpose of the whole yolk-using thing I had going. I finally found a yolk only recipe from CHOW which I used and it worked great.
Aside from experimenting with the different citrus juices, I also added a little more butter to some of them to make a thicker spread for toast, which was crazy delicious. I substituted honey for the sugar with the grapefruit curd and…let’s just say that I won’t be doing that again. Honey can be a very strong flavor and it was too overpowering in this application, for my taste at least.
I was in the store the other day and saw some beautiful pomelos, which look like giant grapefruits and immediately wondered what they would taste like in a curd. I’ve got some more egg yolks in the freezer…so…guess what I’ll be doing this weekend?
i LOVE your new animated header!!!!!
Thank you, Kim!!
those look very pretty! i have only had lemon curd but those flavors you made all sound wonderful. And please try the pomelos
they are like a sweeter grapefruit to me.