If you love sour notes in sweet baked goods, then you should definitely try making a delicious lemon custard at least once. It will perfectly highlight the taste of the biscuit itself, giving it original notes. In addition, it is quite easy to prepare, and there is absolutely no need to buy exotic ingredients. Unfortunately, now this cream is mainly popular only in the UK and North America, but gradually it began to spread throughout the rest of the world. This article will present lemon custard recipes with photos that you can prepare yourself at home.
Features of the dish
Lemon custard is quite different from all the others, as it can resemble pudding in appearance. However, this does not prevent it from being an unusually tasty addition to various dishes such as cakes and eclairs. Distinguished by its bright taste and aroma, it is also quite healthy, since you can find a huge amount of different vitamins and minerals in it. It’s quite rare that desserts can truly boast such a chemical composition. So it is not at all surprising that it has been widely used in English cuisine since the 19th century.
Lemon curd for cake
If you decide to use lemon custard for a cake, then the best option would be to prepare simple classic or orange cakes for it. This is how citrus fruits will look most advantageous. By the way, the recipe given here can be used not only as a delicious layer for a cake, but also as a separate dessert.
So, to prepare it you will need to take the following products:
- 250 ml milk;
- 40 grams of premium wheat flour;
- 2 egg yolks;
- 1 lemon;
- 80 grams of granulated sugar.
Shortbread cake with ice cream
For shortbread cakes, it is better to prepare a light cream, so the “Ice cream” with whites is perfect. But you can also make “Ice cream” for shortbread cake according to other recipes. For shortbread dough:
How to cook: instructions:
- To prepare a delicious cake with ice cream, mix flour with sugar and salt. Mix.
- Place the flour on the counter and place the frozen butter cubes on it. Cut the butter with a knife until fine crumbs, without touching it with your hands. The butter should not melt, otherwise the dough will lose its shape during baking.
- Break the egg into the well in the center of the crumbs and quickly mix the dough with your hands until smooth.
- Divide the dough into two parts, wrap in film and put in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
- Roll out the dough thinly on parchment or silicone, poke it with a fork and place in the oven preheated to 180⁰ for 10 - 15 minutes.
- Prepare the “Ice cream” using egg whites or cream. Pipe towers from a piping bag onto the cooled shortbread.
- Decorate with fruits, nuts, chocolate, etc.
Step-by-step preparation
When using this lemon custard cake recipe, it is recommended to follow the following instructions:
- The first step is to take a thick-bottomed saucepan and pour milk into it. Then you will also need to grate all the zest from the lemon directly into it. So, the taste will be much richer. Once these ingredients are ready, they need to be mixed and put on low heat.
- While the lemon milk is heating, prepare the other ingredients. To do this, grind egg yolks and sugar together, and then add flour to the resulting mixture. Everything is thoroughly mixed and gradually added to the already heated milk.
- You should carefully mix the entire sugar-egg mass into the liquid in small doses. In this case, the mixture will have to be constantly stirred to prevent the appearance of lumps.
- The resulting cream should be simmered over low heat until the mixture becomes thick enough. This will take about 10 minutes. When cooking the Kurd you need to stir constantly. The custard will need to be cooled before use.
This recipe for lemon custard will delight even the most discerning gourmet, as it will impress not only with its aromatic taste, but also with a pleasant shade that looks great on baked goods.
Cream with condensed milk
The advantage of this sour cream and lemon cream is that it is very dense and can be applied in a thick layer.
Ingredients
You need a few products:
- half a can of condensed milk;
- 120 grams of sour cream 20%;
- 1/2 lemon.
Cooking method
The recipe is quite simple:
- Whisk the sour cream and condensed milk.
- Squeeze the juice from half a lemon and finely grate the zest.
- Add the zest to the sour cream and, while whisking, pour in the lemon juice. The cream immediately begins to thicken.
This delicacy can also be used as an independent dessert, stuffed into baskets, decorated with cupcakes, or layered into cakes.
You can diversify the taste with the help of additives - candied fruits, dried fruits, chocolate chips, nuts. Preparing an airy dessert with lemon flavor is not very difficult, and additives will make it even more appetizing. Also
Tasty and aromatic, very refreshing cream! Suitable for pastries, cakes, various desserts, as a filling for custard pies! I will share a proven recipe for lemon cream.
I admit, this was the first time I cooked it, and now I regret that I didn’t do it before. Firstly, lemon is incredibly tasty, secondly, it is quick and easy to prepare, and thirdly, it is very versatile. Very refreshing!
So let's get started. Break 3 eggs into a cup and add 125 grams of sugar.
We don’t have the task of whipping it all into foam, so we just lightly beat it by hand with a whisk so that the sugar dissolves.
Add lemon zest, lemon juice and a pinch of salt. Stir a little.
Place the cup in a water bath and add to this mixture some not too hard butter, cut into small pieces, so it will melt faster.
Once the butter has melted, add starch and mix well.
Readiness can also be checked with a special thermometer; when the mass reaches a temperature of 85 degrees, the cream can be removed from the water bath.
Now we need to rub it through a strainer; we no longer need the zest in the finished lemon cream. We wipe it.
And the last step is to cool our finished lemon cream. But not just like that, leaving it open on the table, but immersing the jar in cold water and stirring constantly. This is done so that an unnecessary film does not form on the cream.
This is what the cream looks like after cooling in water; it flows off the spoon slowly, in large drops. Now you can put the cream in the refrigerator to cool completely.
This is such a delicious, aromatic, very refreshing lemon cream.
Be sure to try it, I'm sure you'll really like it. By the way, you can simply store it in the refrigerator for about a week or a week and a half, or you can freeze it, in which case the shelf life is about six months.
A light, delicate British miracle - lemon cream - is very good not only as a traditional English dessert.
The delicacy can be an excellent filling for cakes, eclairs, and pastries. Lemon cream, the recipes for which are quite simple, goes well with sponge cakes, shortbread pastries, puff pastry or choux pastry.
The cream has a delicate sourness, pleasant sunny shade and a festive citrus aroma. It allows you to play with flavors, as it goes well with cinnamon, vanilla and even bay.
Unlike many cake fillings, lemon cream is completely non-greasy, has a reduced calorie content and can occasionally please girls who are losing weight.
Dough for eclairs
If you like more delicate and refined pastries, then you should try using the recipe for eclairs with lemon custard. It will be a little more difficult to prepare than a cake, but the taste will definitely please you. To prepare them you will need the following ingredients:
Sand basket
1. In order to prepare the lemon meringue, we will first start kneading the chopped shortcrust pastry from which the base of this pie will be made. To do this, sift the flour and salt into a bowl.
2. Cold butter should be cut into small cubes or grated on a coarse grater directly into a bowl of flour. Beforehand, the butter can be kept in the freezer for 15–20 minutes so that it does not immediately begin to melt when kneading the dough.
3. Rub the butter and flour with your hands as quickly as possible until you get coarse sand crumbs. You can also chop the butter and flour with two knives on a table or cutting board, although in my opinion, everything is much faster, easier and cleaner by hand.
4. Immediately add 5 tbsp to the shortbread dough. l. water, previously kept in the refrigerator, and knead the dough with your hands until it begins to form a lump. If you see that the dough is crumbling and cannot form a ball normally, you need to gradually add more water, half a tablespoon at a time. The finished dough should be wrapped in cling film and left in the refrigerator for 30 minutes.
Important! You need to knead the chopped dough very quickly and under no circumstances try to make it smooth. There should be noticeable pieces of cold butter in it, which will boil during baking in the oven and break the structure of the dough, making it light and slightly flaky.
5. Roll out the chilled dough on a floured surface and place it in the mold, making small sides about 2 cm high. There is no need to grease the mold, since the dough with so much oil will not be able to stick to it. Then the dough must be pricked often with a fork so that steam can escape freely and it does not swell in the oven.
Advice! For this pie, it is very convenient to use a round springform baking dish with a diameter of 24 - 26 cm, from which the meringue can be easily removed and served on a beautiful dish. In addition, a pie prepared in a tart pan with grooved sides looks very appetizing, but it will be almost impossible to remove the finished pie from it, so you will most likely have to cut and serve it in this particular form.
6. Cover the dough in the form with baking paper and fill it to the top with some kind of weight, for example, dried beans.
7. Bake in an oven preheated to 200°C for 15 minutes, after which remove the weight and dry the sand basket at the same temperature for another 10 minutes.
Advice! “Spent” beans should not be thrown into the trash, since they can be put in a bag or jar and used for similar purposes as much as you want.
Cooking method
To prepare the most delicate eclairs with a pleasant sour lemon custard, the recipe for which is given here, you will need to follow these instructions:
- The very first thing you need to do is prepare the choux pastry. To do this, pour milk and water into a saucepan with a thick bottom. Then butter is placed in them. You will need to place the pan on the fire and heat the mixture over low heat until the butter has completely melted.
- As soon as the oil becomes liquid, increase the heat and wait until it boils. After this, pour the sifted flour and salt into the mixture and mix everything quickly. Then the pan is removed from the heat for about a quarter of an hour.
- As soon as this time has elapsed, the pan with the dough is placed on the stove again. Now you need to mix it thoroughly so that it forms a sticky ball. Afterwards, the dough is removed from the heat again, and fresh eggs are added to it one by one. After each of them, the whole mass is kneaded very thoroughly.
- The resulting choux pastry should be placed in a pastry syringe, and with its help, strips should be planted, which will turn into future eclairs. This should be done directly onto a baking sheet that has been covered with parchment. It is worth considering that during the cooking process the eclairs will increase in size, and therefore you need to leave space between the pieces.
- They will be baked at a temperature of 210 degrees in a preheated oven for about half an hour. You should be careful to ensure that a golden brown crust appears on them. Before you put the filling in them, you need to cool completely, otherwise it will melt and leak out.
Lemon buttercream
To prepare the lemon cream, take 1 lemon, wash it thoroughly, place it in a pan with water and cook over low heat for 30 minutes.
Then cool the lemon in cold water, cut it into two halves and squeeze the juice out of them into a blender cup. Place the lemon skin there and beat in 2 eggs. To give the cream a beautiful bright color, add 1 teaspoon of turmeric to a blender cup.
Beat everything well into a homogeneous mass, add 0.5 cups of sugar, pour into a saucepan, put on medium heat and cook, stirring constantly until thickened.
Cool the resulting mass and mix with 500 ml of pre-whipped cream. That’s it, the delicious lemon buttercream is ready!
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Preparing the cream
After preparing the dough, you need to start preparing the lemon custard itself according to the recipe:
- For this, add milk and lemon juice to a small saucepan, then add the zest and egg. The whole mixture is thoroughly beaten, after which vanillin and sugar are added.
- The future cream is placed on low heat, after which you can add salt and flour. Everything is quickly mixed under constant heat to prevent lumps from forming. The mixture will need to be removed from the heat only after it thickens.
- The resulting cream needs to be cooled a little, then add butter and mix everything. Before use, you should put it in the refrigerator for about half an hour, after which, using a culinary syringe, fill each eclair with cream. Before serving, it is best to sprinkle the baked goods with powdered sugar.
Recipe for lemon curd cream for cake
To prepare lemon curd cream, which is used to decorate baked goods, you will need: - 500 g of cottage cheese;
- 400 ml heavy cream; - 3 tbsp. l. granulated sugar; - 1 tbsp. l. gelatin; - 2 lemons; - 1 tbsp. l. lemon zest. Pour gelatin with 2-3 tablespoons of water and leave for an hour to swell. During this time, rub the cottage cheese through a sieve (if the cottage cheese is dietary, then there is no need to wipe it). Squeeze the juice out of the lemons and chop the zest with a knife or rub on a fine grater. Then mix the cottage cheese with granulated sugar, lemon juice and zest. Place the swollen gelatin in a water bath or low heat and heat until completely dissolved. Then cool. Whip the heavy cream using a mixer or blender into a thick, fluffy foam. Then carefully mix them with the lemon curd mass, add the cooled gelatin in a thin stream and mix everything carefully.