I found myself with a half gallon of milk that was two days from it’s expiration date which is really odd in my house. Both Bob and Claire are cereal eaters and typically I can’t stay on top of the milk consumption, but for some reason, they’ve switched breakfast foods. My first thought was to do bread pudding, I have bread languishing as well, but I wanted something lighter than that and in a flash my mothers baked custard came to me. Eggie, sweet, and smooth with a touch of nutmeg. Mom always made hers in a 9×13 pan, but since I hadn’t put my soufflé dish away after the chocolate class I decided to make it in that instead. I know, not the complete memory, but a more contemporary memory.
Baked custard is super easy to make and is the “c” in Comfort Food.
4 C whole milk, room temperature
6 eggs room temperature
1 C sugar
1 T vanilla
fresh nutmeg
Butter or oil for the baking dish
Heat oven to 350. Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Lightly butter a soufflé dish, set aside. Combine the milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla and blend until smooth (I like using my emersion blender for this). If you want to be fancy schmancy French pour the custard through a strainer into the prepared soufflé dish, this will give you an extra smooth custard. However in my family with Mom’s farm girl mentality it was about using up what you had and eating every bit, so we never strained custard. Place the soufflé dish in a larger baking pan and move to the stove. Grate nutmeg over the top of the custard. Place the pan in the bottom shelf of the preheated oven and carefully pour the boiling water into the roasting pan, stopping when you think the pan will slosh over when you slide it into the oven (typically about one to one and a half inches up the side of the soufflé dish. Bake for one hour. Typically one hour does the trick. The custard will still be jiggly in the middle. If you over bake the custard it will be watery once it cools. It should be a ver pale golden color. Carefully remove from the oven (since you have hot water in the pan and remove the soufflé dish from the water and allow to cool before eating.
If you like your custard warm you can eat it once it’s cooled about 20 minutes, or cool to room temp, cover and refrigerate over night.
Serves about 8.
