Curd samples ready to go!

Not sure if anyone has noticed, but I have been making quite a bit of fruit curd lately, and our fridge has literally started to groan under the weight of it all.  Luckily for said fridge, my printed labels arrived today for some of the curds, and I already took delivery of the small sample jars last week.  So this evening I have been sterilising, packing, cooling and labelling to my heart's content! 

The first three flavours to be tucked away in their new homes are the St Clement's, the strawberry and the rhubarb.  Here are the little beauties in all their splendour, nestled together on our dining table, just waiting to be devoured.

To say I am pleased with them is an understatement.  I think they look really cute.  I really do need to find a stainless steel jam funnel that will fit into the neck of the jars though.  The one I have is exactly the same size as the jar necks, so it was a bit fiddly keeping that still whilst ladling the curd in without getting the stuff all over the place!  Added to the fun element of it all I suppose.  Well that's what I'm telling myself anyway!

Thanks go to C Wynne Jones who supplied these really cool jars.  http://www.cwynnejones.com/  When I start making my curds on a grander scale (soon I hope!) I will have to upgrade to jars that are a bit more substantial, but for the time being, to give folk a little taste of things to come, these little jars I think are the perfect vessel for giving away little tasters of my stuff.

A strawberry curd is born!

Whilst picking up some groceries on the way home from work last night, I decided that the strawberries looked (and smelled) decidedly delicious!  So I picked up a punnet or two and returned home with another mad urge to create a new fruit curd. 

I hunted around the cupboards and fridge to see if there was another flavour that I could pair up with the strawbs, but in the end decided that it would be a pure strawberry curd with no interference from any other overpowering ingredient, apart from the usual hint of lemon juice and zest.

As the fruit was bubbling away on the hob, the aroma wafting around the house was just mouthwateringly joyous!  I couldn't resist dancing around the kitchen with Vivaldi's Four Seasons playing on the i-pod while I inhaled the heavenly fruit fumes!  The finished curd is absolutely sublime and I can imagine it livening up any English cream tea in place of the strawberry jam.  In fact, if I can muster up some vegan fruit scones later on today I may indulge in an English cream tea in the garden, but instead of having whipped cream on the scone alongside a mug of tea, I may ring the changes by having vegan cream in a mug of coffee instead.  Yum!

Another fruit curd experiment

Something I have been meaning to conjure up in my kitchen for quite some time is a vegan rhubarb curd.  Tonight I finally caved in and, after a really busy day at work decided to don my apron quick as a flash, get into my kitchen pronto, and as a result the rhubarb curd has been born!  And with enough time spare to cook and eat dinner, watch a bit of telly and do a bit of blog updating.

So far my vegan curd making reportoire includes a basic lemon curd, an orange curd, a mixture of the lemon and the orange curd, grapefruit curd, mango and lime curd, peach and almond curd, and a blueberry and lemon curd.  Not quite sure what my favourite of the bunch is so far!  All have been very delicious.  And while this curd cools I still have to decide if rhubarb is up there with the others as a winning flavour.

This evening's resulting curd is actually more of a lemon curd with background rhubarb flavours.  I made it with the only rhubarb available to me - tinned in a light syrup.  Next time I will try with fresh.  I am really pleased with the taste at this early stage, but the appearance lets it down somewhat.

Here it is cooling in a jug next to a bowl of apples.

Now when I think of rhubarb, I think of bright, colourful, attractive pink stems, mouthwateringly gorgeous to the eye.  But actually when cooked you realise how they are mainly green in colour.

So here is my jug of mushy peas, I mean lemon curd with rhubarb!  I will be sharing a sample of it with colleagues at work tomorrow to get their view on it.