Sugar makes lemon curd! And lime curd. Because there were limes, too. When we have cocktail nights, Shake has a tendency to think that we need more lemons than we really do. And not to cast all the blame on him, I fully confess to buying more limes than I really need for cooking. This results in a vegetable bin full of citrus rolling about. What’s a gal to do with all of it?

Make curd. Which sounds complicated. Turns out: not really. I found a simple recipe in Cooking Light and adapted it.

Lemon or Lime Curd

• 1 cup sugar
• 1 tablespoon cornstarch
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup fresh lemon or lime juice
• 3 large eggs
• 2 tablespoon butter
• 1 teaspoon (or more) grated lemon or lime rind (I just go crazy—I don’t think you can have too much zest; just avoid the white part of the rind)

Combine the first three ingredients in a medium saucepan, stirring with a whisk. Stir in juice and eggs (I whisked the eggs first before adding; otherwise you might end up with clumps of cooked egg white—gross!); bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk.

Reduce heat, and simmer one minute or until thick, stirring constantly. (You will stir for a long time, and suddenly, it’ll start to thicken up. Kitchen magic.) Turn off the heat and add the butter and HALF the zest, stirring gently until the butter melts. The original recipe calls for stirring all the zest in at this point. This is fine for lemons; I discovered that with the lime zest, it turns an unattractive faded green color in the heat.

Transfer mixture into a bowl to cool. Once cool, add the other half of the zest in and stir it up. Cover (or transfer to pretty containers) and chill at least six hours or overnight. Yields about 2 ½ cups. The recommended serving size is one tablespoon, but yeah…restraint isn’t necessarily a Sugar + Shake quality.

Excellent on toast, shortbread, uh, toast…we like toast.