Strawberry Curd

Birthday Cake – Day One – Strawberry Curd

It’s my birthday week!! I’m always excited the week of my birthday! To celebrate, I made MY Favorite cake! It has this strawberry curd in between layers of vanilla cake coated with swiss meringue buttercream!

I’ve made lemon curd several times and I’ve made ginger lemon curd. This was my first foray into any other type of curd, so I was curious as to what the difference between curd and jam.

According to About.com, jams and jellies have pectin added to them (either naturally from apples, or in powder form). Jelly is clear and does not have fruit chunks. Fruit curd is made with eggs, sugar and BUTTER.  Well darn – this recipe doesn’t have butter in it…  I guess what I have is a fruit butter? Or some sort of hybrid fruit butter jam….

Well, whatever it is, I really wanted to just eat this up! It was really good, especially since it’s not exactly strawberry season. But if you shop at Costco like I do, you know there is always yummy fruit there.

My Mom came into town over the weekend special for my birthday. I’m not sure what our week holds for us, but I’ll fill you in as the week progresses. I’m just happy that my mama is here. I’m so fortunate to still have my mom in my life and my daughter is lucky to have all four grandparents in her life.

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Strawberry Curd

Prep time:  20 mins

Cook time:  20 mins

Total time:  40 mins

Serves: 1 - 2 cups

Fresh Strawberries are best, but frozen ones will also make a great strawberry curd for a cake filling.

Ingredients

• 8 oz strawberries, stems removed and cut into quarters
• 2 egg yolks
• ¼ - ½ cups sugar (test sweetness of strawberries)
• 1 Tablespoons cornstarch
• 3 Tablespoons lemon juice
• pinch of salt

Instructions

1. Put the strawberries into a pot and cover. Heat over medium-low heat for 7 minutes. Use a potato masher to break up the strawberries and cook for another 2 minutes. It should be soupy.
2. In a separate bowl whisk the egg yolks, sugar and salt until it's smooth and lightened in color. Add in cornstarch and lemon juice and stir until combined.
3. Add a cup of the hot strawberries to the egg mixture to temper the eggs. Stir it constantly as you add the hot berries being careful not to cook the eggs. Add the egg mixture back into the pot and constantly stir with a silicon spatchula the strawberries for 5 minutes over medium -low heat. Increase the heat to medium and and stir until it boils. Let it boil for 1 minute while stirring and then pour it into a glass bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. The plastic wrap will prevent it from forming a film.
4. Refrigerate overnight.

Notes

recipe from Scientifically Sweet

3.3.3070