Blood Orange Season. Yay!

I love when blood orange season comes around for that short time at the beginning of spring. Normally I'm not much of an orange eater, because they're just too messy to take to work, but I love to cook with them. Blood oranges have that beautiful sunset hue and an added tartness, which goes well in sweet and savoury dishes. You can pretty much substitute blood orange for normal orange in any recipe, but might need to adjust the sugar content of sweet dishes to your taste.

Today I thought I'd have a play with both sweet and savoury, but you'll have to wait until tonight for the savoury part. I need to cook it for dinner first!

Lemon curd is a favourite in our house and I love it on hot toast or crumpets, in a lemon meringue pie or mini tarts. Why not make a blood orange version instead! I had to adjust the recipe a bit, reducing the sugar and upping the orange juice, but it turned out pretty well. I'm now stocked with blood orange curd to last, oh, two days! 

Now, this recipe isn't a traditional curd with loads of butter and eggs, it's a bit of a cheats version because it uses cornflour to thicken. Less butter and sugar though, so I guess that's a good thing.

Easy Blood Orange Curd

1/2 cup caster sugar
1/3 cup cornflour
1 cup blood orange juice
3/4 cup water
50g butter, cut into cubes
2 egg yolks
Finely grated rind of 2 blood oranges

Combine sugar and cornflour in a saucepan with water and juice and stir until smooth.
Heat until it boils and thickens, stirring with a whisk constantly.
Remove from the heat and quickly whisk in butter, rind and egg yolk.
Beat until the butter has melted and it is smooth and thick.
Pour into sterilised jars and keep in the fridge.

Easy and very tasty. Guess what I'll be having for breakfast tomorrow?