The Making of Caramel Custard ~ Gourmet chronicles

I am a food lover. Now, when I say I love food, I love eating slightly more than preparing it. Still, I love to indulge in cooking and baking when I have the time, patience and most importantly when I am in good mood. Yes, one has to be in a good mood to do all the cooking and baking. And ever since I had that caramel custard at George restaurant in Pune, I couldn’t just get over that sweet yet not so sweet creamy taste of this particular delicious preparation of eggs and milk, that I decided finally, ‘One day, I am going to make it!’. And that one day happened to be just a week ago when coincidentally all the ingredients I needed for this dessert fell in place. Now, as I am yet to buy an oven, I made caramel custard using my pressure cooker. So here goes my recipe. First a cliche tip from experience: When you cook/bake/grill make sure you have all the ingredients in hand first. And all you need to do is just the execution of your recipe.

Ingredients:

• Milk – 500 ml
• Eggs – 2-3
• Sugar for making caramel – 1 cup
• Sugar to mix in the batter – 1 1/2 cups
• Vanilla essence – 1tsp
• Cocoa powder/Coffee powder (optional) – 1 tbsp

Instructions:

1. First boil 500 ml of fresh milk with one and a half cups of sugar. Let it cool down. Check when it is warm, neither very hot nor very cool.
2. Meanwhile, we will begin with the making of the caramel. Heat 1 cup of sugar till it melts and the outcome would be dark brown sugar in liquid form. Make sure that while you melt the sugar, keep stirring it so that the sugar doesn’t burn. Also melt the sugar in low flame, otherwise the sugar will get burnt. For best results, do not add water to the sugar while making caramel. The entire process will take about 15-20 minutes. So now that your caramel is ready, grease the sides and the base of your aluminium tin with butter (unsalted one) and then spread the caramel evenly on the base. Let the caramel cool down.
3. Now comes the preparation of the batter. Beat the eggs well so that it becomes frothy and appears double its original quantity. If you have a blender, beating will become easier. Now, add the beaten eggs and 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence to the cooled milk and keep stirring till a smooth frothy mixture is attained. If you want to add some cocoa or coffee powder, you may. I did coz I love the bitter sweet flavor of the final outcome.
4. Now add some water in your pressure cooker (unlike what you do when baking cakes in pressure cooker, where you use a salt base). Transfer the mixture to your aluminium tin and keep it inside the pressure cooker. Cover the tin with a lid. Close the pressure cooker. Do not put whistle. Heat in high flame for the first 10 minutes and then switch to slim heating. It will take about 40 minutes exactly for your caramel custard to get ready.
5. So, after approximately 50 minutes, your caramel custard will be just ready. But wait! Don’t dig into it instantly. Let it cool down for a while, say 10-15 minutes. Now bring on a plate. Turn over the tin and you will be presented with a beautiful sight of caramel custard waiting to be savored (or devoured?).

Considering, this was my first experience the dessert was just good. Oh yes! It could have been better! Next time, when I get my oven, I will sharpen my skills better in making desserts.(My husband has finally decided to get me one after I managed to convince him with my incessant pestering which he gave in to after a lot of frowning over the fact that I had got an induction stove long back and haven’t used it more than once). Now, that my dormant desire of cooking and baking has come to life, I have promised him that the new member to join my band of electrical appliances will not get wasted! So for now, I believe his fears of ‘money going down the drain’ are put to rest! Enough with my ranting. Sure it deserves another post! By the way, let me share with you the pics of my caramel custard.

Tip for the day:

Remember, for all baking/steaming/grilling delicacies, the easiest is collecting the ingredients and toughest is to bring all of them together in the right consistency. After all, it is the consistency that brings all the magic in food, especially desserts.

Hope all the oven-less people like me will find this above recipe useful. You may also read my first baking experience here. So try making this simple yet healthy dessert and enjoy its outcome (come what may!) :P Am sure the result cannot be anything but rewarding! Forget the calories. After all, sweet tooth don't hurt once in a while! So people, signing off for now. Will be back with some more in the coming weeks. Till then, Cheers...!!