![\"\"](\"http:\/\/orangette.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/28da8-9f7a0941-31.jpg\")
<\/a><\/div>\nThis is a post about lime curd. \u00a0Not lemon curd, but lime:\u00a0<\/i>“the superlative citrus,” as our friend Niah, who is also the bar manager of Essex<\/a>, likes to say. And if it seems like I only post sweets and baked goods anymore, I know<\/i>, I know, you\u2019re right. I\u2019m sure it\u2019ll pass.<\/p>\n This particular lime curd comes from a cookbook of my mother\u2019s, Gourmet\u2019s America<\/i><\/a>, published in 1994 – a year that, I should admit, just for the sake of completeness, I spent mostly driving mopily around Oklahoma City, newly won driver\u2019s license in my wallet, listening to Nine Inch Nails\u2019s\u00a0The Downward Spiral<\/a>\u00a0<\/i>and having a lot of feelings for Trent Reznor<\/a>. \u00a0Meanwhile, back at home, my mother was doing something of more lasting import, which is to say: while combing the bookshelf in the kitchen, pulling together ideas for a party, she found this recipe for lime curd. The idea was to serve the curd next to a pile of sugar cookies, and then your guests could “frost” their own cookies. She tried it. I remember ducking through the living room at some point during the party, noticing the stack of cookies and beside it a bowl of curd, creamy yellow with shards of green zest. I grabbed a cookie on the way up to my room, smeared it with as much lime curd as I could fit onto the edge of a knife, and wished, for the rest of the night, that I had taken two. That said, I don\u2019t make it as often as I should, but that\u2019s only because of my own biases: when I think of sweets, I think of chocolate first and citrus later. But it came to mind recently, when Matthew and I were brainstorming a forthcoming\u00a0Spilled Milk<\/a> episode on limes, so I made a batch. And when it tasted as good as I remembered, I took it to a book club meeting – some of us\u00a0Delancey<\/a>\u00a0ladies have banded together to read books and, apparently, eat lime curd – along with a box of Walker\u2019s Pure Butter Shortbread Scottie Dogs, and I am pleased to report that we enjoyed it more than Vladimir Nabokov\u2019s Pnin<\/a><\/i>.<\/p>\n * For the record, I still have a thing for “The Perfect Drug<\/a>.” And, as I learned in a New Yorker<\/a><\/i> profile, Reznor is a better dog owner than I am, because he actually remembers to brush his dog\u2019s teeth.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
\n <\/p>\n<\/a><\/div>\n
\nMy mother has repeated the lime curd \/ sugar cookie trick several times since, always to acclaim. And when I became interested in a few things that were not Trent Reznor*, it was the first curd I ever made. I was intimidated at first, but fruit curd is easy alchemy: a stovetop custard, sort of, but with fruit juice instead of milk. This one isn\u2019t a\u00a0purely\u00a0lime curd – it uses both lemon and lime juices, plus lime zest – but it nails it. It\u2019s undoubtedly\u00a0lime<\/i>, fruity and fragrant, but the lemon helps to perk it up, to cut the sugar, eggs, and butter with added acidity. It\u2019s an ideal texture for frosting a cookie, or for filling a cake, or folding into whipped cream to make a mousse.<\/p>\nLime Curd<\/h2>\n
Adapted from Gourmet\u2019s America<\/a><\/i><\/h3> \n \n <\/header>\n\n