Sugar Free Lemon Curd
How has it taken me so long to get this recipe to you all?
I’ve had a really really good lemon curd recipe up my sleeve for quite a while now. It’s come out for Christmas presents and occasionally during the year in our house. I’ve missed it, and as lemon season rears its lovely head and beautifully tart, bittersweet, fresh and tasty lemons appear on our shelves, I couldn’t resist putting together not just one lemon curd recipe, but a series over the next few weeks that includes not just sugar free lemon curd, but also plenty of ideas of what to make with it!
So welcome to post number 1 of the lemony January series, the foundational one: sugar free lemon curd. One of my favourite sugar free recipes of all time. Tart but sweet, tasty and fresh, low carb and gluten free.
I always feel that the best jams and curds and purees are those that taste of the fruit being used. It wasn’t until I gave up sugar that I realised how untrue this is of most conventional shop-bought spreads. Most are so heavily sweetened that they taste more of sugar than they do of fruit. Having a slight tartness and freshness to a jam or curd is a beautiful thing, and the way my tastebuds have changed since cutting back on sugar makes me appreciate it far more than I used to.
If you are less of a fan of a strong lemon flavour, slight tartness and freshness, do adjust the sweetener and add more xylitol or a drop or two of liquid stevia. But to me and my family, this lemon curd can simply not be improved upon.
It’s the perfect texture and taste for spreading on bread or dolloping on top of pancakes, for stirring through my sugar free vanilla ice cream, for sandwiching sugar free biscuits together (try it instead of the jam in my sugar free Jammie Dodgers recipe), for filling a sugar free layer cake…
Whatever you like to do with lemon curd, you can do it with this sugar free version and make your life a little healthier. With less than 10 mins prep time and a little bit of cooling time, you can have an easy, quick, cheap and healthier lemon curd ready to keep you going for a couple of weeks.
Not too bad for so little time and effort!
A sugar free version of traditional lemon curd, this is gluten free and low carb and completely delicious. Use it as you would shop-bought curd: in layer cakes, poured over pancakes or sugar free ice cream, spread on toast, or however you like to have it!
- 2 medium eggs + 2 medium egg yolks
- 100 g (1/2 cup) xylitol (or sweeten to taste with extra xylitol and/or liquid stevia)
- 2 lemons, zest and juice (I strongly recommend using organic or at the very least unwaxed when using the zest)
- 110 g (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened and cut into small cubes
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Whisk the eggs, egg yolks and xylitol together in a medium saucepan. Add the lemon zest and juice and the cubed butter, then place the pan over a low-medium heat. Whisking constantly, heat the mixture gently, and keep whisking and heating until it is thickened, which should take about 5-10 mins. You will need to keep a close eye on the curd. After a couple of mins it will start to thicken - from this point, make sure you regularly take the pan off the heat, whisk a bit, then return it to the heat, to keep the mixture from getting too hot, boiling and curdling. After about 5 mins of this, the mixture should be nice and thick and easily coat the back of a spoon.
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Pour the curd into a cool bowl and allow to cool completely on the counter at room temperature, before pouring into a sealed jar and keeping in the fridge for up to 2 weeks.
Hello, If you do not want to use butter, what else can you use? Thank you!
Hi Pauline,
I haven’t tried it with anything else, and I think it probably won’t taste the same without, but you could try replacing with coconut oil? Coconut oil usually works well in place of butter in baked goods (I get an odourless one, this one: http://amzn.to/2nj82Wq so you don’t get the coconut taste if you don’t want to), but I’m not sure how well it would work in a curd. I almost feel like coconut milk/cream might even work better, although you’d have a more prominent coconut flavour in that. If you try one of these things, do let me know how it works out! I haven’t personally tested them so cannot say for sure, but coconut oil has very similar properties to butter so should work in theory! 🙂
Hi, would this work using rice malt syrup instead of the xylitol? Thanks 🙂
Hi Rosie, it certainly should, but you will probably need to use quite a bit more as rice syrup is less sweet. Start with a similar amount and then taste and adjust until you are happy. You could also add a few drops of liquid stevia to make it sweeter without having to add a lot more syrup. 🙂
Hi Thank you for the recipe
If I wanted to use agave syrup instead of xylitol how much would I need to use?
Thanks
Hi Minu, I’m not sure – we don’t ever use agave because it is 90% fructose (table sugar is only 50%), so we usually avoid it (for more info, this article sums it up quite well and has good links to some of the studies it basis facts on: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/agave-nectar-is-even-worse-than-sugar). It would be quite hard for me to estimate how to use any liquid sugar as it would probably change the consistency quite a bit. Because it is so high in fructose and therefore very sweet, you might get away with using just a little agave, so it could potentially work, but I couldn’t guarantee it. It would no longer be classed as “sugar free” by the World Health Organisation though so I would bear that in mind when thinking about how much syrup to add. This recipe seems to make it work with honey: https://cookieandkate.com/2016/lemon-curd-recipe/, so it’s probably worth testing it out with liquid sweetener, as it seems others have succeeded! 🙂 Sorry I couldn’t be of more help!