Week 5: Custards

This week we learned how to make custards.  Custards are a cooked mixture of milk/cream and eggs.  We made two this week, one set in the oven with eggs (Creme Caramel) and another with gelatin (Bavarian Cream).

We started with the Creme Caramel.  We made caramel to coat the bottom of the foil cups and drizzled extra on a cookie sheet to be used for garnish later when it hardens.  We made a wet caramel which is easier to make as it is less likely to burn.  The only difference is as it sounds, there is water added to the sugar at the beginning of the cooking process.  Adding the water gives it extra time before it browns as the water has to boil off.

The instructor taught us a good trick for cleaning caramel off the pot once you are done.  Just boil water in the same pot and the steam will loosen up all the hardened caramel.

The key with a custard is not to curdled the eggs.  This is done by slowly increasing the temperature of the eggs by adding the hot liquid incrementally.

We baked the Creme Caramel in a water bath as this helps to evenly bake the custard.

As that was in the oven, we made the Bavarian Cream.  For this we hand whipped the cream to stiff peaks, a first for me!  It helps to have your cream, bowl and whisk as cold as possible.

The Bavarian Cream came together pretty easily, just mixing the ingredients and doing the same slow heating of the yolks with the cream.  We had the choice of three flavours:  coffee, strawberry and chocolate.  I picked strawberry :)

To plate them, we unmoulded the custards from the foil and flipped them over.  With the creme caramel, we just ran a knife around the edge and flipped but with Bavarian Cream, it doesn't pop out as easily, so we had to rip the foil away.  

Once again, lots of food for sharing!