Lemon Butter & Lemon Zest Syrup

I don't have a lemon tree but my neighbours do and its branches overhang my fence, occupying my airspace. Naturally, I collect my lemon-tax regularly, and what with some bonus windfall, I recently found myself with a glut of lemons.

Freezing freshly squeezed lemon juice in an ice cube tray is a smart way to bank the goodness before the lemons mould in a bowl. But I've never been much of a saver and prefer the instant gratification of lemon butter and lemon zest syrup.

Lemon Zest Syrup

Lemon zest syrup will last for weeks in a fridge and you can drizzle it on crepes, stir it into cocktails or like me, use it to top a lemon butter tart. Unlike the lemon butter recipe below, it's pretty difficult to fuck up. You can swap in other citrus or replace some of the juice with water if you prefer a sweeter syrup. As with most of my posts, it's more of a recip-ish than a recipe.

Ingredients

3 big lemons, juiced

zest of three lemons chopped into fine slivers (see below)

6 tbsp caster sugar

6 tbsp water

Method

After you've juiced the lemons, peel off the thin layer of zest with a potato peeler. Try not to peel too deep - you want to leave that bitter white layer of skin behind.

Put your spectacles on, sharpen your good knife and chop the zest into very, very fine slivers - a milimetre at most.

Put the zest, juice, water and sugar in a small saucepan and heat on low, stiring until the has disolved. Bring the syrup to a gentle bubble and let it reduce. It's done when the zest has become translucent and the syrup thickly coats the back of a spoon. Ten minutes should do it.

Turn off the heat and let it cool before pouring it into a clean jar for storage.

Lemon Butter

Ingredients

200 ml lemon juice (About 6 lemons)

1 cup caster sugar

4 large eggs

150g butter, in 1cm cubes.

Method

First set up a double boiler - that's a heatproof mixing bowl sitting over a pan of simmering water. It really is very simple, but if you'd like someone to overcomplicate it for you, here's a bizarrely detailed article courtesy of Bon Appétit.

In your heatproof bowl, whisk the caster sugar and eggs until the sugar has disolved.

Whisk in the lemon juice.

Place the bowl over your pan of simmering water and keep whisking, whisking, whisking... eventually, the liquid will begin to thicken.

Now, you really need to pay attention; If you wander off for a wee at this point, you'll come back to a lumpy lemon-flavoured bowl of scrambled eggs. So hold it in and keep whisking.

When the liquid has thickened to a double cream consistency, plop in the diced butter and do some more whisking, whisking, whisking... I know it's boring, but just look at those pretty little tarts.

The lemon butter will thicken to a runny custard consistency - but don't push it beyond that point because it can split or become grainy if it overcooks. Bear in mind, it will thicken up when it cools in the fridge. You can turn off the heat, remove the mixing bowl from the pan of water and go have a wee now.

After 20 minutes, whisk the cooled lemon butter one last time and spoon it into a few sterilised jars. Pop them in the fridge to cool and thicken.

I used the lemon butter and the lemon zest syrup to make little tarts. You can try the excellent pastry recipe I wrote for my Fruit Tart of Shame, but because individual tarts are a bit of a faff, I won't judge you if you use store-bought frozen tart cases - I did.

Bake your tart cases and let them cool before dolloping a big spoon of lemon butter in there. Finish each tart with a teaspoon of lemon zest syrup and serve with some double cream. Oh my, they are so velvety-lemony-buttery.

Unopened and stored in properly sterilised jars, the lemon butter will be good for about 10 days - or 5 days once the jars are open. Saying that, I'm not a food scientist so don't come at me with your lawyers if you end up killing an elderly relative.

At least they'll have had a decent last meal.