Apricot and lavender curd

- a paean to the very easiest of preserves, plus recipe

Summer is about to call last orders on stone fruits. We will have a little longer with the plums but for peaches, nectarines and apricots this is very nearly it. Preserving has become the priority. After weeks and weeks of glorious sweet and savoury eating of all these fruits, I’m now all about prolonging their pleasures.

They are terrific in jams, of course. If you are a jammer or wannabe-jammer then you might enjoy Five Seasons of Jam by Lille O’Brien, as recommended in the comments over on the page for September’s seasonal cookbook club theme. But in honesty, I am not all that much of a jammer. Neither mad on eating it nor making it. HOWEVER. Give me a fruit curd and I’m in.

These more laidback cousins of the preserve family come with definite Cadbury’s Caramel Bunny* vibes. Not for curds is there any messing around with pectins and setting temperatures - all it takes to create this creamy, tangy, almost custardy treat is to stir the ingredients together for a while over heat. The downside being that whilst curds involve less work than jams and the like they also last for less time: just a couple of weeks in the fridge. Up to a month tops. (But they do freeze pretty well.)

A curd can do anything a jam can, and more. How about:

• spreading it on scones or use as the filling for a sponge layer cake.

• folding it into whipped cream, broken meringue and flaked almonds for a curdy Eton Mess.

• sandwiching macarons together with it.

• rippling the curd through whipped cream as the filling for homemade eclairs.

• spreading it as layer into the middle of a sponge cake before baking it - the curd then infuses the sponge with fabulousness.

• using it as the base for a pavlova’s sweet middle. Seasoning’s recipe for gooseberry pavlova uses gooseberry curd but that curd could be switched for any other kind. Perhaps most fabulously of all would be the apricot and lavender version I will eventually get to giving you the recipe for here (then also switching the gooseberry pav’s finishing touch of coconut flakes for toasted flaked almonds or pistachios).

To be clear, this is not the kind of curd that Miss Muffet of nursery rhyme fame was enjoying on her tuffet until that pesky spider came along. She was having dairy curd that was the forbear of lemon curd. Tarts of dairy curd, eggs and spices were popular in the early 1600s. Then, as lemons became more available towards the end of that century, they were added too and that’s how we ended up with lemon curd. A definite classic.

Lemon curd’s clear and strong flavours are ideally balanced perfectly between sweet and sharp. This apricot version has rather more complexity and depth to it, with a hint of almond from the apricot stones being left in during the cooking process. It’s the lavender**, though, that gives this curd its subtle, almost hard to put your finger on, muskiness.

For me, a curd is the queen of the preserves and this one is the queen of curds.

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Apricot and lavender curd

makes 1 x 500ml jar

420g fresh apricots

1¹/₂ lemons

210g unrefined caster sugar

55g unsalted butter, cut into cubes

3 eggs, lightly beaten

5 lavender heads + one extra

500ml storage jar (sterilised in the dishwasher or rinsed with boiling water and left to air dry)