Food - Gift - Love Not just for the Holidays!

he holidays are finally here!  I am so excited.  The store is all decked out, we are celebrating our anniversary and customers are coming in placing orders for cookies and purchasing holiday gifts.  It's a wonderful time of year.

This topic is near and dear to my heart as I teach so many classes related to FOOD.  Food related gifts are so popular and when they are made by you it's so very personal.

One of my favorite classes was a canning class on Meyer Lemon Curd.  I will never forget when I connected with a grower in California by the name of Karen.  She had the absolute best and biggest lemons I have ever seen. I am a little sad as I write this because Karen passed away unexpectedly last Christmas.  I would like to think we were a little more than Facebook friends.  She has some of the greatest stories and it turned out she was an author.  Who knew? I will miss Karen and those Large USPS Priority Mail Boxes full of Meyer Lemons that would arrive November to February.

My first order of Lemons arrived in late November and we had our first canning class featuring these little balls of sunshine.  I love Lemon Curd!

Follow these easy steps below and make some curd for the ultimate holiday gift.

Assemble all of your ingredients:

2 sticks of Unsalted Butter

1 1/4 cups granulated sugar

1/4 tsp fine sea salt

1 Cup of Meyer Lemon juice (3-5 lemons)

4 Large egg yolks

Equipment - Double Boiler, Candy Thermometer, Glass Jars

Prepare a double boiler making sure that the water does not touch the top pot or bowl.  Place butter, sugar and salt in the top pot and whisk until sugar dissolves. Keep whisking while you add the lemon juice. Add the egg yolks one at a time while you you whisk after each addition. Continue to cook until temp reaches 170 degrees - approx 15 minutes.

The curd should coat the back of the spoon.

Remove from heat and then cool over ice bath. Store in an airtight conatiner in the fridge until ready to gift.

This curd is so delicious and decadent.  You can change things up by adding the zest of the lemon to the sugar which will provide bits of sunshine in the finished product.  You can also preserve your product by using a hot water bath canning process which would allow you to store longer than 30 days.