Love lemon curds but hate standing over the stove? This one is smooth, bright and done in minutes. Hi I'm Gemma Stafford, professional chef with over 20 years experience and I'm going to show you how you can make lemon curd in the microwave in minutes. We'll whisk the eggs, sugar and fresh lemon. Microwave in short bursts and you end up with a thick silky curd. So let's get baking. So not only springtime but all year round this is one of my most popular recipes on social media. Every time we post it, it goes crazy. It's so simple and the results are amazing. So let me show you how to do it. So in my bowl here I've got some large eggs and one egg yolk.

I'm going to add in some sugar, granulated sugar and then whisk those together. Here's a fun baking fact. If you've ever made a custard, ice cream bases, curds, things like that and you put sugar and eggs together. If you don't mix them and walk away what can happen is that the sugar draws moisture from the egg yolk and almost kind of cures it and cooks it. So when you later go back to stir it, you find these lumps of what are essentially cooked egg. And it's really bizarre. Remember as a young chef in my 20s when I used to make a lot of ice cream bases like what is going on here because I got distracted, I walked off. So anytime you're mixing egg and sugar together, whisk it straight away so that doesn't happen. So whisk those

together until they're nice and smooth. Next we are going to add in here our lemon zest. So here's another baker's tip. Now we're talking about baker's tips is anytime you read a recipe and it says zest and juice, remember always to zest before you cut open for juice because I remember many times over the years juicing lemons and then reading the recipe I also needed the zest and then I was going back and zesting half-cut lemons. So zest first always if you need it and then juice. So as a chef one of things I hate to do is to juice lemons but if you're having a hard time doing it, pop them into the microwave, heat them up a little bit, take them out and use a reamer and the juice will come out

so much easier. You'll definitely get way more juice doing it that way. And on the note of lemon juice don't be tempted to use store bought because the acidity is different, doesn't have as much flavor and you want real lemon juice for this recipe to get that real citrus kind of like mouth puckering flavor. Whisk those together as well. Basically what lemon curd is a lemon custard, that's what it is lemon curd. So eggs are the base and we have to be very careful about how we treat them and work with them and I'm going to talk more about that when we go to microwave it because yes this is done in the microwave and not on the stovetop. So once all those ingredients are combined the last thing we're going to add in is

our butter, just add that in there and then follow me over to the microwave. So microwaving this is much faster than doing on the stovetop all in all it takes around three to four minutes but because it's egg-based we're going to be carefully cooking it so 45 second intervals and then we're going to whisk and just make sure that we get the consistency that we want. So did I just put a metal bowl in my microwave? Yes I did and I'm very proud to say it's one of my products as part of my Gemma made line. I'm very excited to say that I've been working on some products for over a year now and they're finally ready for you. So these bowls are what I call my magic bowls, they come in a set of three and all different colors.

They are lined with stainless steel with plastic on the outside. They can go from the counter into the microwave and even into the dishwasher safely. They all come with their own lids with a Celtic design on the top. They're easy to clean and they nestle inside each other for easy storage. I made these bowls with myself and you guys in mind because when you're a baker and you're making brownies and bashers and curds where you have to milk chocolate and butter you can do it all in this one bowl. For more information about this product and my others visit the url on screen or visit the description box below. Okay now back to our curd. So around two and a half minutes in you will start to notice the curds

thicken quite quickly just like this. This is when you really want to pay attention. So give it a good whisk. I'm not seeing any lumps of overcooked egg. This is good. It's runny. It can be thicker. I know it can be thicker so I'm going to put it in for another 45 seconds. Now let me tell you something. Everybody's microwave is different. Everybody's bowl is different. I will tell you this is why we say 45 second increments because yours might take longer. It couldn't take five minutes. It might take less. It could take three minutes. So I just want you to just keep a close eye on it and err on the side of caution so you don't end up with lemony scrambled eggs. So there we are. So it did take us a little over four minutes.

My microwave is 1200 watts. So check the wattage of your microwave lots. They're 900. So it might take you a little bit more time. This is why we go low and slow. Now this is nice and thick. I can see a kind of a ribbon of curd but let me tell you something. Because this is egg based, it's custard based, what happens with these kinds of recipes is that once they cool, they continue to cook and what happens when they continue to cook is that they thicken. So by the time our curd has cooled, it will be much thicker. So just factor that in case you're wondering is it a bit too runny. If it's along these lines, don't worry because it'll cool and it will thicken up a lot. So follow me over to the countertop and we're going to pass it through

a sieve. So my curd did take a full a little over four minutes. So now what we're going to do the next step with any kind of a curd or custard actually is to pass it through a sieve. This is to remove any type of lumps we might have gotten and that is totally possible. Pass it through there. Any little lumpy bumpy bits will soon be gone. With a curd, you want it to be silky smooth just like velvet. So don't skip this step. As you can see in my sieve, there's a few pieces of egg white that always happens to me. Nothing wrong with that. It's very common and then also our citrus zest is going to remain in the sieve. It already provided what we needed which is lovely flavor.

Now the nature of curd and something like a creme patisserie that is a thickened custard is that it can form a skin. So to prevent this, while it is still warm, lay cling wrap directly on the surface. This will stop air getting at it and preventing it from getting a skin. If it gets a skin it will not be pleasant. It would not be nice to eat and you'd have to remove it. So laying this directly on prevents that. Because our curd is hot, you want to let it sit out at room temperature until it goes cool enough to cover and put in the fridge. Once it's in the fridge for a few hours, it'll thicken and be ready to use. Once your curd is chilled, it's going to be nice and thick just like this. I love having curd on hand. Not only is it lovely

by itself with some yogurt or some ice cream, it's fantastic to add to pavlovas or even the filling for a cake. What I like to do because I just made some Irish soda bread scones is have it on a freshly baked scone with some lightly whipped cream on top. Rich, creamy, thick and bright, this lemon curd is the real deal made at home with good quality ingredients in a fraction of the time it takes on the stove top. The real secret ingredient here is the microwave. I really hope you enjoyed this video and for lots of recipes just like this one, stick around, I've got hundreds of them for you to check out.

Thanks so much for watching, I'll see you back here again really soon.