Cherry Curd

Ruby red and silky smooth, homemade Cherry Curd! This easy small batch fruit curd recipe is packed full of cherry flavour from fresh seasonal cherries. A quick recipe that will make about a cup and is perfect for fresh or frozen fruits.

Jump to:

• Why you'll love this fruit curd
• What is Cherry Curd?
• Ingredient Notes
• How to Make Homemade Cherry Curd
• Expert Tips
• Variations and Substitutions
• Storage
• Serving Suggestions
• FAQs
• Cherry Curd

Why you'll love this fruit curd

• Fun new fruit spread - if you're tired of the same old jams or preserves, this cherry curd gives you a fresh new option! It's great with an afternoon tea, with toast or mixed into yogurt. Or it can be used with cake recipes, tarts or frostings. The options are limitless!
• Vibrant ruby red - this cherry curd is all naturally colored and flavored by the cherries. The exact shade of your finished product will depend on the fruits used, but it is guaranteed to be vibrant!
• Easy to follow recipe - this recipe for a homemade cherry curd is a super easy guide to making a flavorful and fun fruit curd in your kitchen with some basic equipment.

What is Cherry Curd?

Cherry curd is a smooth and somewhat creamy fruit spread made using cherries. It is similar to lemon curd, which is a typical accompaniment to scones for an afternoon tea or a great filling for a tart.

Curds, including this cherry curd are thickened using a combination of citrus juice and eggs. Unlike jams, you will not need cornstarch or pectin in this recipe. This means they tend to be more opaque and less sugary than jelly or jam fruit spreads.

Ingredient Notes

For this recipe, you'll need:

• Cherries - fresh or frozen cherries, with the stems removed and pitted. The cherries should be halved or quartered. They'll be blended into a puree in the process of the recipe, so they don't need to be particularly finely chopped.
• Sugar - granulated sugar or caster sugar work well in this recipe. You can also use brown sugar here, like in my Blueberry Curd, which will give a bit of a more molasses depth to the finished recipe.
• Lemon juice - either bottled lemon juice or the juice of one lemon.
• Eggs - you'll need a couple of egg yolks and a whole egg for this recipe. You can use egg yolks only, however, using one whole egg (and therefore using an egg white) will make this creamier than an egg yolk only curd. The eggs should be room temperature ideally, and lightly beaten.
• Butter - unsalted butter. This doesn't need to be room temperature here, however, it is easier to melt butter that isn't fresh from the fridge!

How to Make Homemade Cherry Curd

This recipe is incredibly straightforward and will give you about a cup's worth of gorgeous cherry curd in under an hour.

You'll need to follow these steps:

1. Place the chopped cherries, sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan over a medium heat (image 1 below). Stir occasionally until the sugar has dissolved and then bring the sauce to a boil.
2. Once boiled, remove from the heat and transfer to a blender or food processor to blitz the cherries into a fine puree (image 2 below).
3. Strain the puree through a sieve, returning the juices to the saucepan and discarding the pulp (image 3 below).
4. While the saucepan is still off of the heat, slowly add the beaten eggs to the juice, whilst whisking continuously.
5. Return the pot to the stovetop and cook over a medium heat, whisking frequently until thickened. This normally takes about 20 minutes.
6. Test that the curd is thickened by coating the back of the spoon. Carefully run your finger through this - it should leave a clean streak that doesn't refill with runny curd (image 4 below).
7. Once thickened, take off of the heat and stir in the butter until melted.
8. Pour the finished curd into a heatproof bowl or jar and allow to cool completely. Store in the refrigerator until ready to use.

Expert Tips

My top tips for this recipe are:

• Don't worry about chopping your cherries finely. You will blitz the cherries into a puree as part of the process. This means that it is actually useful to have larger chunks than smaller ones!
• The finer the mesh for the straining, the better for removing the pulp, but you will need to press to ensure you extract all the juices.
• If your mixture is a little grainy at the end, once thickened, you may still have some pieces of cherry pulp in the saucepan or your eggs may have scrambled a bit (this can happen if you've not stirred enough). Don't worry, you can either leave as is, or restrain the curd, to remove lumps.

Variations and Substitutions

• Different types of cherries - this recipe has been developed using fresh seasonal cherries. This is a great way to play around with seasonal flavours and preserve some of your favourite fruits in a fun spread. The recipe and process should work for any cherry. Each variety will give its own flavour and shade to the finished product. Try out different types and experiment with local seasonal offerings!
• Orange juice - the use of lemon juice in this recipe is to give a citrus tang, which helps to lift the fruit curd and make it a bit more zingy fresh. You can use other citrus in this recipe to similar effect. Orange in particular goes nicely with cherry, making it a great substitute here. If substituting with a fresh orange, you'll likely only need the juice of about a quarter of it. Oranges tend to give a lot more juice than the average lemon!
• Dairy free cherry curd - this recipe can easily be made dairy free. The butter is the only dairy here and is not in fact essential to the curd. It acts to give a silkier texture and a bit more glossy finish. You can simply leave this out, making an easy cherry curd without butter, and still have a gorgeous curd with luscious flavour.

Storage

Like any fruit curd, this cherry curd will need to be kept in the refrigerator. For best results, keep covered or in a jar.

This recipe not designed for home canning, but the curd will last in the fridge for several days.

Serving Suggestions

So now that you've got a small batch jar of cherry curd, you might be wondering what you should do with it! Well, here are some simple ideas for making use of your fruity spread.

• Add to yogurt, overnight oats or just spread on some toast.
• Afternoon teas - use this in place of a typical jam or lemon curd to serve with your scones.
• Cake filling - curds work great in layer cakes as a fun filling. For example, you can use this curd instead of the jam in my Blueberry Jam Cake or Strawberry Jam Cake.
• With cheesecake - you can use as a topping for cheesecake, for example, replacing the blueberry sauce on my No Bake Vanilla Bean Cheesecake. Or swirl directly into the filling like my Blueberry Swirl Cheesecake Bars (replace the blueberry curd here).
• Ice cream - use this curd as a tangy topping to ice cream or swirl into homemade ice cream recipes for added flavour and colour.

FAQs

Looking for more cherry recipes? Try:

• Cherry Brownies
• Chocolate Cherry Cinnamon Rolls
• Cherry Chocolate Scones
• No Bake Cherry Cheesecake Pie
• Cherry Brandy (adult recipe)