The 96th Bake: Mum’s Sunday Tea Lemon Curd Swiss Roll

I always grow tomatoes in the garden in summer. I love planting them, but am not great at watering them. This year I decided it might be quaint to have cherry tomatoes growing in a barrel on the deck. Well look at how that turned out!!! With all the rain over Christmas, the roots became water logged and the plants died, then next minute, fruit!!!! -the plants last ditch effort to reproduce. That’s nature for you – a veritable miracle, (not quite the lucky haul of previous seasons!)

I have never made lemon curd. I’ve threatened to, but never actually ventured to do it. I’m pleased now that I finally have and what a great recipe, full of butter, sugar, lemon juice and zest, it tasted like lemon meringue pie filling, just divine. To make the lemon curd, I simply

combined all the ingredients in a heat proof bowl, including chopped butter, sugar, lemon juice and zest and stirred this over a bain marie until the butter was melted. I then added 2 beaten eggs and whipped with a wooden spoon until it was thick. This took quite some time. I even read my book while stirring to pass the time. The resulting thick mixture was to die for, too good not to share. 🙂

I assembled a very large tray for the sponge from two disposable aluminum trays from the $2 shop put together to make one big long one. I made the sponge by mixing eggs and sugar, then whipping them with an electric beater surprisingly over the bain marie for 3 minutes. This seemed to produce a very fluffy mixture quite quickly. I removed this from the heat and kept whisking until it was thick enough to leave a ribbon like trail when the whisk was lifted, (that’s the trick to sponges apparently!) I then added the flour and baked for 8-9 minutes until golden.

Once the sponge was cooked, I flipped it out onto baking paper sprinkled with caster sugar, (with no time to waste while it was hot!). I plastered it with lemon curd and then rolled it up, using the baking paper to help. Et voilà, good to eat. And here’s the full recipe in case you are feeling inspired 🙂 https://www.bbc.com/food/recipes/lemon_curd_swiss_roll_49855