TWD: Vanilla Bean Cup Custards, or Mildly Sweetened Hard Boiled Eggs with Black Pepper? You Be the Judge.

Sometimes things just aren't as easy as we think they will be. Take the story that our good friend Bill tells of his attempt to grab some lunch on New Year's Day, 2000. He had been up late ringing in the new millennium, and was feeling the need for some old fashioned greasy food. "Easy" was of paramount importance at that moment, so Bill did the easiest thing he could think of: he got into his car, drove up to the drive-thru of that mecca of quick and easy greasy food, Burger King, and attempted to order lunch for himself and his wife, Suzanne:

Bill: Hi there. I'd like two regular cheeseburgers and two small fries, please.

Burger King Guy: Ain't got no buns.

Bill: Excuse me? There's some static out here. It sounded like you said that that you don't have any buns.

Burger King Guy: Ain't got no buns.

Bill: Okay. I'm going to pull around and come inside.

{Bill goes into Burger King, where he has the following conversation with Burger King Guy}

Bill: Hey there, sorry, it was a late night. Did you really tell me that you don't have any buns?

Burger King Guy: Yeah.

Bill: This is Burger King. What do you have that I can eat if you don't have any buns?

Burger King Guy: Whopper.

Bill: I thought you said that you don't have any buns!

Burger King Guy: Ain't got no cheeseburger buns. Got Whopper buns.

I don't remember how Bill and Burger King Guy ended up solving the no cheeseburger buns problem that day -- Cheeseburger on Whopper Bun? Whopper on Whopper Bun? Bunless Cheeseburger? All I know is that Bill got into his car that day assuming that lunch would be easy, and it was not. easy. at. all.

Well, just as Bill thought getting a burger would be simple that day, I began this week's TWD recipe for Lemon Cup Custards thinking that they were going to be pretty easy to throw together, because (1) they call for a mere four ingredients, and (2) Dorie says in the intro to the recipe that "custards don't come simpler than this one." Sure, there was that little voice in my head that said "Floating Islands! Floating Islands! Remember how the French think that they are simple, but they were very much not simple for you?" But honestly, if I listened to all of the naysaying voices in my head, I'd never do anything. So I dove right into the custards, believing in my heart of hearts that they would, indeed, be easy.

I first asked David to read the recipe and the various playing around options and tell me which one sounded good to him. He chose the vanilla. Since I was only making a half recipe, and therefore only burning through a little over a cup of milk, two eggs, and a quarter cup of sugar, I decided that rather than using vanilla extract, I would splurge and buy some real vanilla beans to use in the custard. I visualized my silky smooth custard dotted throughout with beautiful vanilla beans from Papau New Guinea. Something not even a little bit like this:


Yes, it does look a little bit like someone sneezed while shaking the pepper shaker. The last time I saw something that looked like that, I was in freshman year bio looking through a microscope at the contents of a petri dish. How did I end up here? Let's review.


I scraped my vanilla beans into the milk, threw the pods in there as well (which Dorie suggest that you do when infusing milk with vanilla) and brought the milk just to a boil. Then I took it off the heat, covered it, and waited 30 minutes for the vanilla beans to work their magic.

I whisked together the eggs and sugar until well blended, just like I was supposed to. Then I slowly added a little hot milk to temper the eggs. So far, so good. No curdling in my bowl. I strained the remaining milk into the eggs while continuing to whisk. There appeared to be vanilla beans throughout the bowl -- hooray! I poured the custards into three teacups, set the teacups in a roasting pan, and filled the pan halfway with water.


I worried about spilling the water and thereby further destroying my oven, which is still reeling from Shrimp Incident '09 and its aftermath (which involved mindboggling amounts of broken glass when the handyman tried to take it apart so I could clean it), but that part all went fine, thankfully.

Dorie says to bake for 40 to 45 minutes, or until they jiggle only in the center. I set the timer for 40 minutes and went off to get the kids into bed. I did not even think about the custards again until the timer went off after 40 minutes. Well, apparently my oven is running hot these days, because by the time I got there, it was evident that I had missed the "jiggly only in the center" stage by a long shot. My custards were not only not "jiggly in the center," they were, I kid you not, the Jessica Biel of spoon desserts, i.e., not jiggly anywhere. Which is great for you if you are Jessica Biel, but very, very bad if you are a custard. Because this is what happens when you stir up a not-jiggly-anywhere custard:


Several times I've made a dessert and thought "Now, this is one fugly dessert. But I bet that Kim, if given the chance, could make this look pretty." Well, between the pepper, er, vanilla bean clusters, on the top, and the shiny chunks of overcooked dairy products, I finally think I churned out a dessert that even Kim couldn't save. Kim?

The custard was edible. It definitely tasted eggy to me, which is not necessarily a problem, but it really needed a stronger vanilla flavor. I wish that I added some vanilla extract, or used the whole vanilla bean (I only used half), or both. But the texture was the dealbreaker for me. I guess it most closely resembles a flan, which will never be among my favorite desserts. David thought the custard was pretty good. He agreed that the flavor was pretty weak, and said that "it really seems like more of a palate cleanser than a dessert." And seeing as we don't really do palate cleansing courses in our house, I am not seeing this custard filling a gaping need for us. But I love trying new techniques, and this is definitely not a recipe I would have chosen to make myself. So I'm really glad that I tried it! And who knows, if I added a little more vanilla and didn't cook it as long, it might have been a completely different dessert.

Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles chose this week's recipe. Thanks for a fun pick, Bridget!