Way back when I had children in my house I made the Baked Custard recipe from my 1978 Betty Crocker’s Cookbook. This became the go to custard to make, although years have gone by without me making it. I was wanting to make a light dessert because we had been overeating and feeling too full and lethargic. I also had many, many eggs in the house and had been asked by my son to have the ingredients necessary for Creme Brulee for when he visits soon. He’s bringing a friend along!
This recipe for custard is nice because it can be cut by 1/3 super simply. Why, might you ask? The recipe makes six custard cups. For some reason I only wanted to make four, most likely because I only had 4 Pyrex custard cups!
Here are the ingredients for 4 custards:
- 2 eggs, slightly beaten
- 1/4 cup sugar
- dash of salt
- 3/4 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 2/3 cups milk, scalded
Don’t be scared away by scalded milk. I put the milk (you can use half-and half also) in a glass measuring cup/bowl and nuked it in the microwave for one minute. That’s scalded enough for me.
In medium bowl whisk together the first four ingredients. Stir or whisk in the milk gradually. Pour into the custard cups. Being in the autumn mood, I put a tablespoon of pumpkin flavored chips in the bottom of each cup before pouring. I am not sure what outcome I was expecting but I was pleasantly surprised. I forgot to sprinkle nutmeg on the tops but this worked out well too.
The custard is baked in a bain marie. I find that my four larger custard cups fit nicely in a 9 x 13 inch baking pan. Pour boiling water into the pan to within an inch of the top of the custard cups. Bake for 45 minutes until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.
(Silly me, I had the weirdest notion that I could bake the dessert while supper was cooking, entirely forgetting that pizza was to be baked for supper! Supper was a little later than planned that evening.)

The pumpkin-flavored chips floated to the top and made a nice little crust. They also made a bit of goo on the bottom. Very tasty and pleasing textures in every bite.

Now for the filling. I do a nice mise en place. I have misplaced/lost the insert to my old-time juicer so juicing the lemons is not as fun or simple as it was before.
For the “creme pat”:






I have a cup of egg whites in my refrigerator taunting me to do something with them. I have these whites because Son made me a Parisien flan before he left for his job in Alaska. I showed him this


But first Hubby and I are so excited that we found Daisy Cottage Cheese in one of the local grocery stores. We had just about given up the search. We have been able to buy their sour cream but had not found the Cottage Cheese for quite some time. This hearkens back to our quest to eliminate additives from our food. We are not purists, although I sometimes wonder if we should be? Or if a reasonable weight loss plan would be to refuse to eat foods that one cannot recognize all the ingredients as real food. I am not the originator of this idea but I do think about it from time to time. Well pretty much at least once a day! And now that spring should be on its way and the farmers’ markets should start to open, maybe we should? (There are a lot of shoulds in that sentence and I try to avoid shoulds.)
Hubby and I decided we would check the ingredients to the ice cream just in case there was a brand that had real ingredients. Most of our grocery stores have disappointed us with this. Several “naturally flavored” cartons had odd sounding ingredients and some even have High Fructose Corn Syrup. But we found a brand that was real! It was the premium product and I paid $1.40 more per carton than the others. Yes, we bought one carton of vanilla and one carton of Belgian Chocolate. Why not? This is Turkey Hill All Natural ice cream. We had not bought ice cream for the house for the longest time and now this is a marvelous find! Yea!

Several oranges were consumed over the course of a few weeks. I dutifully scraped the white pith from the peels. I find a spoon is the best tool as a paring knife will cut through the peel instead of just scraping and of course it will also cut the finger tips if not careful.
















