Vegan lemon curd is so tasty, light and easy to make. It's a flavour bomb made with 5 simple ingredients, without eggs and in literally 5 minutes.
You can use vegan lemon curd for vegan lemon bars, for a crunchy vegan lemon tart, for a lemon crostata, or you can just eat it with a spoon our of the saucepan.
What to expect
Vegan lemon curd is the dairy-free and egg-free version of lemon curd, a fruity dessert popular in England around the 19th and 20th century, served during tea time with scones and biscuits as an alternative to jams.
Vegan curd is easier to make than regular one, and it is absolutely delicious.
Ingredients and substitutions
- Plant milk: you can use any plant milk, such as oat milk, soy milk, almond milk, coconut milk, rice milk and so on.
- Sugar: any.
- Cornstarch: this is essential to thicken the curd.
- Lemons: lemon curd requires lemon juice and lemon peel. Make sure your lemons are ripe, and I would also recommend to get organic ones, since we are using the peel.
- Turmeric: to add the yellow colour to our vegan lemon curd. You won't taste it, it's just for color.
How to make vegan lemon curd
The secret to great lemon curd is, well, good lemons, or better, their peel and juice.
So as a first step, remove the peel from one lemon and add it to a medium saucepan.
Then take 3 medium-size lemons, you can reuse the zested lemon and the peeled lemon, cut them in half, and squeeze their juice.
You’ll need ⅓ cup or 80 grams of lemon juice. Pass it through a sieve and into a small container and set aside.
Filtering the lemon with a sieve is important because we don’t want any lemon pieces or seeds in our lemon curd.
Now to the medium saucepan, add 2 cups or 500 grams of plant milk of your choice, we use rice milk, ½ cup or 100 grams of sugar, we use cane sugar, and ½ cup or 60 grams of cornstarch to help the lemon curd thicken.
Then if we want to give it some yellow color, we can add a pinch of turmeric powder.
Whisk to remove all lumps, then bring onto medium heat and keep stirring till the curd thickens up.
Remove the lemon peel, then add the lemon juice and keep stirring for another minute until the lemon juice is fully absorbed by the curd.
And here you go, that’s our vegan lemon curd and It’s absolutely incredible!
How to use lemon curd?
Our three favourite recipes to use this vegan lemon curd are:
Easy vegan lemon bars
Vegan lemon tart with crunchy base
Variations
Did you know that you can make fruit curd with pretty much any citrus fruit?
Try our orange curd recipe that we use in our delicious orange cake.
Or get creative and substitute grape fruit, tangerine, passion fruit, or mango for the lemon, making your own fruit curd.
Storage
Store the vegan lemon curd in the refrigerator for up to 3 days. The curd will get thicker in the refrigerator, so before using it again, you'll have to warm it up again and whisk it for about a minute to remove lumps.
In some cases, if the curd is too dry, you might need to add 2 tablespoons of plant milk.
Recipe
Vegan lemon curd
Ingredients
- 2 cups plant milk (almond, oat, rice, soy, or other)
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup cornstarch
- 1 pinch turmeric (for the yellow color)
- ⅓ cup lemon juice
Instructions
- To a medium saucepan, add the peel of one lemon (the peel, not the grated zest), plant milk, sugar, cornstarch and a pinch of turmeric to add a light yellow colour. Stir with a whisk till there are no lumps.
- Squeeze the lemons to produce ⅓ cups (80 grams) of lemon juice. Filter it with a sieve and set it aside (you don't want small bits of lemon in the curd).
- Bring the saucepan onto medium heat and stir the liquid with a whisk until it thickens.
- Add the lemon juice and keep stirring with the whisk to incorporate the lemon juice in it until it's fully absorbed by the custard.
- Your lemon curd is ready when smooth and creamy.
Video Recipe
Nutritional Values
If you liked this recipe, you might also like:
Leave a comment and star rating :-)