This week I wanted to bake custards for some reason. I thought the process would be mystifying, tricky and somewhat painful. Turns out a custard takes almost no time to make and it’s pretty simple. After some scrounging around online and in books, I made up a standard recipe for baked custard:

Preheat the oven to 325. To fill six small ramekins, heat 3 cups of milk/cream in any combination until almost boiling. Add a little bit of vanilla extract (or half a bean, with the seeds scraped into the milk) and optional flavorings. Turn off the heat and let it sit for a few minutes. While the flavorings are steeping in the milk, beat 2 eggs and 3 yolks together with 1/3 cup sugar. Now add a little of the hot milk—just a little, straining out your Whisk it into the eggs to temper them. You want to slowly raise the temperature of the eggs, mixing all the while, so keep adding milk little by little. Be gentle and you can’t screw it up.

Place the ramekins into a roasting pan and add enough hot (not boiling) water to go halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Pour the egg/milk mixture into the ramekins. You can just short of the top. Cover with foil and bake for 30-40 mins. Check after 30. A finished custard will may jiggle around a little and look like it’s not done, but when you touch the top, you’ll see that it is solid in the center. Also, it will cook a little more after you take it out of the oven.

On the left—syneresis! This custard curdled because I overcooked it. The cooked-egg protein bonds that thicken the custard got a little too tight and pushed out all the water.

On the right—a reasonably well cooked custard. Yum.

Flavorings:

This form can be taken to a lot of different places. Sugar and vanilla are not the only way.

I made chai custard this week, so I used Rooibos Chai as the flavoring— which I think is made from the same plant as Red Bush tea. Tasty. I brewed 4 teaspoons of it in the hot milk for about 5 minutes before combining with the eggs. Instead of sugar, I stirred honey and a little maple syrup into the milk.

You can really go anywhere with flavorings though. Spices, fruit rinds, pumpkin purée, peanut butter, chocolate, etc, etc. Fermented black bean custard, anyone? You can also make a syrup of any kind and pour a little into the bottom of each ramekin before baking. A caramel custard is made with a simple syrup, but anything that can be reduced to coat the back of a spoon will do.

I wasn’t joking about the fermented black beans. I’m going to make some crazy savory custard at the next full moon.

Something else:

If you are dying for custard and you want it fast, you can make a stirred custard on the stovetop. Forget the ramekins and hot water bath. Once you’ve mixed the milk into the eggs, transfer it all back to the pan and heat over medium for 2-3 minutes, whisking the whole time, until the custard thickens up nicely.

PS. baking911.com has an excellent custard site that is impossible to read but gives the back story on many more custard varieties and methods.