Whilst still in my pyjamas I set about cooking lemon curd. I hadn't made this for years, and had forgotten just how quick and simple it was. I love how beautiful it looks; it came out a delicate primrose-yellow.
This recipe used whole eggs, hence the pale colour; to get a richer yellow you'd need to use a recipe that just used yolks; but I thought this was gorgeous - and it tasted wonderful too.
On a roll, I decided to continue the lemony theme and make a lemon cake. Recently I've become a huge fan of Nigella's Lemon Syrup Loaf Cake (which I don't make in a loaf pan, but as a square tray-bake) but yesterday I wanted to try something a bit different.
After a convoluted saga involving having one-too-few eggs to follow the recipe properly, I ended up adapting the recipe to make just one cake instead of the 2 sandwiched together that it is meant to be. It looked a little disastrous as it came out of the oven (a large section of meringue collapsed off the side, as you can see).
However, with some careful slicing, and a dollop of lemon curd on the side, it made a very respectable pudding!
The recipe can be found here, on Nigella's website, or in her wonderful 'Feast' book. As I only had 3 eggs rather than the 4 required I made 3/4 of the recipe amount, and piled it all into 1 tin instead of 2. It therefore took a bit longer to cook than specified, perhaps 10 minutes more than the recipe says, but that required a bit of a juggling act with the oven temperatures to ensure that the meringue didn't over-brown. It all got a bit complex, and I wasn't taking notes!
However, it's a cake I'd definitely try again... and I don't think that jar of lemon curd is going to last too long either!
