hello everyone, i made and tasted my first lemon curd some days ago, triggered by loretta's mushipan recipe in this thread: http://justbento.com/forum/mushi-pan-variations-dough-and-topping . maybe someone is interested in how to make fruit curd. i have a recipe from roald dahl's cookbook of which i halved the amounts for try-out (made one bigger and one smaller re-used twist-top jar). it's very easy: melt 110g butter in a bowl over hot water, stir in 225g sugar. when combined, add the zest and juice of 2 lemons and stir well again. then add 2 eggs that have been passed through a sieve (an additional yolk will make the product a little firmer if the eggs are small). keep on low heat and stir for approx. 10-15 minutes until the mixture has noticably thickened. pour into glass jars. simple, isn't it? and very good for me, as i'm always looking for additional calories- my bmi is still 18,4 and working at night leaves me drained the next morning. this is like jam with butter and egg added! yay, fruity hidden proteins! for baking mushipan, i add an extra egg yolk to some spoons of curd and put it on top. this called for more little experiments. today i made some raspberry curd, i just changed the lemon for a handful of frozen raspberrys, which i simmered in a little black currant juice for a colour boost and passed through a sieve, then followed the recipe above pretending it was lemon juice. it's cooling on the window sill right now. funny thing about raspberry curd: when i tasted it, i suddenly remembered being on a trip to southern england as a kid. i had some raspberry tarts there and wondered how they'd done the filling, which was too rich for being custard and too sweet and opaque to be made with jam and too smooth and waxy in texture to be made with sth. starchy.. i had totally forgotten about these tarts, but now i finally know what was in them and can even re-bake them! i love it when that happens, don't you?