Taste Memories: Egg Custard

Freshly baked egg custard!

One of the things that I liked best when I got married and right after the Princess came along was a delightful egg custard. It was quick and easy and no one else in the house liked it so I could eat it all myself. It had little sugar, but it had eggs and milk so in my book it made a good breakfast as well as a good dessert. I hadn’t had any for years, but last week during a cold snap I was trying to figure out what I could make to keep the oven on these came to mind. They turned out pretty good even if I still had to eat them all by myself!

Egg Custard

adapted from Better Homes and Gardens 1950’s edition

1 cup milk (I used full-fat coconut milk from a can)
2 eggs
2 T sugar (I used turbinado)
1 t vanilla
Freshly grated nutmeg

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Warm the milk until some bubble form around the edges. Meanwhile, whisk the eggs and sugar in another bowl. When the milk has cooled slightly whisk in the vanilla and then the egg mixture. Divide the mixture between ramekins. I used 5 ounce ramekins, but if your ramekins are larger you could probably get away with two. Heat some water in a kettle and while it is heating place the ramekins in a pan. I used a 9 in square pan. Grate some nutmeg over the tops of the ramekins. When the water is heated pour it in the pan around the ramekins until it is an inch high. Place the pan in the preheated oven for 40-45 minutes. Custard is done when a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Enjoy warm or cold!

Using Up Leftovers: Making Lemon Curd

The finished product! I loved the vanilla bean specks!

Every once in a while I make a recipe, say my favorite gluten-free bread, that uses egg whites and then leaves me with egg yolks to use up. There are lots of ideas of how to use up egg yolks: you can make scrambled eggs, use them to make French toast, add them to meat loaf…but the idea that stuck in my head a few weeks ago was lemon curd! Lemon curd is a custard that you would normally find in the middle of a lemon meringue pie (between the whipped whites and the crust) and just happens to be my favorite part of the lemon meringue pie.

Lemon curd is fairly easy to make–I used to make it all the time when I wasn’t dairy free. It tastes great on toast, on top of ice cream, in a miniature pie, on top of plain cookies, and my personal favorite with a spoon. However, it does require butter and I had just used up the last of my earth balance in some cookies I made. I did have some coconut oil that I thought would be a possibility. I decided to experiment even though I was worried about the coconut oil taste showing up in my lemon curd. (Not that it would be a bad thing, I just really like the lemon taste.) Apparently, other than adding the eggs too fast and getting bits of egg mixed into your curd (easily remedied by straining!) there is not a whole lot you can do to mess up lemon curd!

Lemon Curd

Adapted from Annie’s Eats
1/4 cup citrus juice (I only had one lemon so I used one lime to get the 1/4 cup)
1/2 cup vanilla sugar (can use regular sugar, but this gave the curd an extra yummy taste. Make your own vanilla sugar by putting split vanilla beans into sugar and mixing it up)
4 egg yolks
3 T coconut oil

Stir the lemon curd frequently!

Mix the juice, sugar, and eggs together over medium low heat. Add the eggs, stirring frequently to make sure they don’t heat too fast. Add the coconut oil a little at a time and keep stirring. Continue to cook until it thickens (you can see the path of your spoon when you stir–about the consistently of a slightly runny pudding). As soon as it’s thick remove from heat and push it through a fine mesh strainer. This will take care of any accidental egg chunks (yes, they are that gross!) and give you a smoother curd. Tastes wonderful hot, and terrific chilled. Keeps for a couple of weeks in the fridge, but mine never lasts that long!

Taste Memories: Strawberry Shortcake

Gluten Free Dairy Free Strawberry “Shortcake”

You know those wonderful desserts that you feel like you could make a meal off of? However, you are always disappointed because they come at the end of a meal when you are already full! My mom figured out how to fix that! Usually a couple of times a year she would serve a dessert for dinner with a side of hot dogs or some other protein. One of my favorite early summer desserts was strawberry shortcake! I always wished I could have a strawberry shortcake for my birthday cake, but alas, my birthday came at the end of the summer.

My mom would bake two shortcakes, carefully slice them in half and butter them. Then she would layer sugared strawberries, whipped cream, and cake until we had a towering dessert that was the best thing you ever ate! Unfortunately, I can no longer eat shortcake like she made it and I can’t have whipped cream like that either. However, in my quest to make food that I can eat that tastes great I concocted a substitute.

Shortcake isn’t hard, but its something I don’t find time to make. For a quicker way to feed my cravings I make a gluten free biscuit that has a bit of suger in it to make it sweeter. I use the “Biscuits Sumpreme” recipe from the “Better Homes and Gardens” cookbook (the 1950’s edition), substituting gluten free flour blend for the flour called for in the recipe and earth balance sticks for the butter. Then I usually skip the sugar on the strawberries because they’re usually sweet enough. Then for the whipped cream I use coconut whipped cream! Did you know that if you put a can of whole fat coconut milk in the fridge overnight in the morning you can scoop out the solid part (save the liquid for something else) and whip it with some sweetner and it tastes, looks, and acts like whipped cream? It’s amazing.

To assemble your individual strawberry shortcakes you slice the biscuit in half and butter (use earth balance for dairy free treat!). Then layer…really however you like. I usually do something like this: Biscuit, whipped cream, strawberries, whipped cream, biscuit, whipped cream, strawberries, whipped cream. Can you tell I like whipped cream? Sometimes I just eat it and sometimes I pour a little almond milk on top to help if the biscuit turned out a little dry. And there you have it…Gluten Free Dairy Free Strawberry Shortcake! A wonderful treat, and an even better breakfast!