We grow lots of different types of citrus trees, partly because they grow easily, have few bugs and are easy to manage and partly because I just love fresh citrus straight from the tree. You do not get mandarines or tangelos or indeed any citrus from shops that have that tang that comes from a freshly picked fruit.

I keep the trees reasonably small, pruning off the leaf miner, removing crossed branches and keeping the centres from becoming too crowded keeps the trees manageable, and in our area able to be netted. During the day the cockatoos steal the fruit, sit on the fence, eat out the seeds and throw the rest of the fruit on the ground and at night we have visits from fruit bats and possums. I have found that the fruit trees need to be netted fairly early in the season, before the fruit is ripe, because once the visitors have found it they become very persistant and insistant and anything short of steel netting and razor wire will not entirely protect the crop.

Regular mulching, feeding and consistent watering provides us with virtually all of our citrus. If it’s not in season in our garden we tend not to buy it because they taste so much better from our trees.

Lime Butter

Lemon / Lime Butter

This is so good and so easy that it is difficult to understand why anyone would buy some bright yellow thickened gloop that has such a long shelf life. Mine doesn’t need a shelf life, it gets eaten fairly quickly.

Ingredients

  • 3 small eggs or 2 large, mixed well
  • 1 cup caster sugar
  • 25 g butter
  • juice of 3 limes and their zest or 2 lemons and their zest

Method

  1. Put all of the ingredients in the top of a double pan over simmering water. Stir continuously until thickened.
  2. If strands of egg appear or mixture becomes lumpy use a stick mixer to blend to a smooth consisitency.
  3. Bottle into clean dry jars and store in fridge.

Lemon / Lime and Honey Butter

This is a different taste because of the honey and the tiny bit of salt balances the bitter and sweet. It shows that this recipe can be adjusted using whatever you have. In one instance I used palm sugar as part of the sweetener and Logicol as part of the fat and the results were lovely.

Ingredients

  • 4 eggs beaten
  • 1/2 cup honey
  • 125 g butter
  • 1 cup sugar
  • 3/4 cup lemon or lime juice and zest
  • pinch of salt

Method

  1. Cook as above. Makes about 600ml.

Mandarine Butter

Just perfect to use up the masses of organic mandarines that you get from one tree. It doesn’t take long to prepare as they  as they only need to be juiced.

Ingredients

  • 4 eggs, mixed well
  • 1 cup caster sugar
  • 50g butter
  • 1 cup of mandarine juice

Method

  1. Put the juice and sugar in a steel bowl over a pan of simmering water.
  2. Add the butter and stir till melted.
  3. Add in the eggs and stir continuously until thickened.
  4. Bottle into clean dry jars and store in fridge.
Lime Butter Cooking

cook slowly in a double boiler