1 week Ago By Claire Schofield
Custard. It’s yellow, it’s creamy and it goes with everything sweet. It may not be a high end dessert choice , but it’s cheap and cheerful and it gets the job done - no wonder it’s a British classic .
You don’t just have to plump for a tin of ready made custard or a box of powdered custard, though. You can make your own ‘thick and velvety’ yellow take on what the French call ‘ Creme Anglais ’ with just one added ingredient. Basic custard requires just a few key ingredients - eggs, milk and sugar.
Some recipes will also add vanilla extract to help enhance the overall flavour, and butter or cream to lend it a wonderful richness. But when it comes to the texture, cornflour is the ingredient you need to create a lovely, thick and velvety texture. Cornflour is an effective thickening agent for custard as the granules swell and absorb the liquid ingredients when heated, which helps create a thick, creamy and smooth texture.
Nigella.com explains: “The custard needs to come up to boiling point to thicken and to lose the taste of the uncooked starch, but the cornflour stabilizes the egg yolks so that they can tolerate higher temperatures without scrambling. Again the more cornstarch there is relative to the amount of liquid used, the thicker the custard will be.
” If you haven’t made custard before, Allrecipes has a simple custard recipe that is very easy to make and it only takes 15 minutes in total. You’ll need four cups (909 ml) of whole milk, four large eggs, 1⁄2 cup (63g) caster sugar, one teaspoon of butter, one teaspoon of vanilla extract and three tablespoons of cornflour for this recipe . Start by adding the milk, butter and vanilla extract into a saucepan and stir over medium heat until simmering, and remove the pan before the mixture comes to a boil.
Then whisk in your eggs, sugar and cornflour until the sugar has dissolved, before returning the pan over a low heat. Then pour in your egg mixture, whisking constantly until the custard is thick enough to coat the back of a spoon. This should take between five and 10 minutes.
Then either serve your custard warm or transfer into a bowl and allow it to cool before chilling in the fridge. Allrecipes explains: “This old-fashioned custard, made with simple ingredients you likely already have on hand, is the perfect sweet treat to whip up on a whim. “Custard is a decadent dessert made with eggs, milk, and sugar.
Eggs are responsible for custard's thick and velvety texture, but some recipes (such as this one) call for thickeners such as cornstarch or arrowroot for extra richness.”.
