Sunday Morning - Baked Custard

Every time, Sunday mornings, after a night out and feeling a bit depressed of a hangover which is not fully developed. I have the urge to cook something special, which I then can eat all by myself. Most of the time this special cooking events involve unhealthy fattening dishes, so this time I'm going wild and try something else.

I also need to inform, that the recipe I have is also the first time for me, and I have my mind set to make baked custard from my newly installed gas oven.

Okay back to the kitchen, what do we need? We need about 625ml of milk, 3 eggs, 1 egg yolk, 75g caster sugar, 1 or 2 teaspoons of natural vanilla essence grated fresh nutmeg or ground nutmeg.

Now, for me with one eye in the Sanyo oven manual, we preheat the oven to moderately slow 160c to 140c degree. When we wait for the oven to get on the right temperature we bring the milk almost to the boil in a medium saucepan. If you see signs of cooking remove the saucepan from the heat.

Whisk the eggs, egg yolk, caster sugar and the vanilla essence to your taste in a bowl until it is just combined. I doesn't need to get aerated.

Now gradually whisk the hot milk mixture into the egg-vanilla mixture. Strain into your 1-liter capacity shallow ovenproof dish, in my case I use a class oven dish. After a few seconds you can sprinkle your creation with the nutmeg.

Place the dish inside large baking dish. Carefully pour boiled water into the baking dish to come halfway up to the side of the custard dish. Bake for about 45 minutes, or better, until the custard just wobbles in the center or when a small sharp knife inserted in the center of custard comes out clean.

You can serve it warm or cooled with stewed fruits, if you like....