After I posted the recipe for blood orange curd last week, my mom’s best friend Maria sent me a note asking whether if curds could be made with honey instead of sugar. She and her husband are on a limited diet right now, but honey, eggs, citrus, and dairy are allowed. If a batch of curd could be sweetened with honey, she though it would make a very nice treat in the face of a whole bunch of food restrictions.
I’d not tried making a citrus curd with honey before, but dove into the challenge. I used the same recipe framework that had worked so nicely for the blood oranges, but cut back on the egg yolks by one (to account for the extra liquid the honey would be adding) and swapped in honey for sugar by weight (3/4 cup of sugar weighs 6 ounces, so I used that much honey. Because honey weighs more than sugar, the volume measure is 1/2 cup).
It took a few minutes longer to set up, but it came together beautifully. I used Meyer lemons for this batch because they’re the citrus that most needed to be used in my kitchen. The flavor is gloriously tangy and the sweetness is nicely balanced. I may start sweetening all my curds with honey from now on.
Honey Sweetened Meyer Lemon Curd
Ingredients
- 5 egg yolks
- 1/2 cup honey if you have a scale, measure 6 ounces of honey right into the bowl with the yolks
- 1/2 cup meyer lemon juice
- zest from fruit
- 1 stick butter cut into cubes (1 stick is 4 ounces)
Instructions
- Whisk the yolks, honey, juice, and zest together. Position bowl over a simmering pan of water and stir with a silicone spatula until the curd coats the sides of the bowl and the spoon.
- It should be about the thickness of regular whole milk yogurt (not greek yogurt) and will take between 6 and 9 minutes to achieve the proper thickness.
- Remove the bowl from the pan and stir in the butter. Once the butter is melted, run the curd through a fine mesh sieve to remove the zest and any scrambled bits.
- Pour into a jar and refrigerate. It may look a little runny when it's still warm, but it will thicken up as it cools.
- This is not a curd that should be canned. It will keep in the fridge for 10-14 days or can be packed into small jars and frozen for up to 6 months.
I have a bucket of lemons perfect for some lemon curd. I just need to know, being from Australia how many ounces or grams are in a stick of butter and how long would it last in the fridge.
A stick of butter is four ounces or approximately 250 grams. Curd lasts 10 days to two weeks in the fridge and up to six months in the freezer.
Google says: 4 ounces = 113.398093 grams
This looks Awesome.
Thank you
oooohhhh, aaaahhhh. Pinning this into my honey folder for the hopeful honey harvest this fall. Thank you!
Can this be boiling water processed? If so, for how long?
It cannot. That’s why I didn’t include those instructions. I recommend preserving this one via freezing.
my oh my – I am swooning right now
I especially appreciate this post because it shows your thought process in adapting a recipe, i.e., accounting for additional liquid and substituting honey by weight not just volume. Knowing how you decided to adapt will be of use when I want to adapt something else to honey.
my oh my – I an swooning right now
Oh my oh my, Marisa, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you doing this. It’s perfect! My diet is now even more restricted, and I can’t think of anything I can eat this with. But when I am feeling deprived, I dip a spoon into my lovely widemouth blue pint jar with a wonderful old lid and have a spoonful and send you good vibes.
xoxox
maria
So glad to have helped create a treat for you! 🙂
I made lemon curd using the regular recipe for my wedding cake filling. It was perfect! Best wedding cake ever and I have sent your link to quite a few folks at the wedding. Thanks for making my day great!
I can’t have dairy, so no butter. Can I make this with Coconut Oil instead?
I really can’t predict how it will work with coconut oil.
I was “gifted” about 100 Meyer Lemons & knew immediately that I needed help from Marisa! My husband is a 4th. generation beekeeper, so I love all of Marisa’s recipes using honey & this one is definitely a keeper. Thank you Marisa, love your work!
Thank you for the kind words, Kathy! So glad my recipe was able to help you out!
How much zest?
The zest from 1 lemon or from all of them??
I use the zest from all the lemons.
I know I said this already, but I tried this with Valencia oranges from our tree and it turned out better than I could have imagined. It’s beautifully rich, and I love the delicate floral note the honey contributes. The only change I made was to add the zest of an extra orange for an extra pop of flavor. (I made sure to keep the quantity of juice to 1/2 cup, however, so as not to throw off the proportions of the liquids.) Thanks again for a great recipe that I know I’ll come back to.