There is a baking basic everyone should make at home, the custard recipe. If you've never dared to make it, you should know you don't need a food processor, not even an electric mixer, and certainly no magical powers. You only need a saucepan and some whisks, and just a few minutes! Making custard is one of the easiest things there is. Believe me! It's easy and quick, and with this recipe and a few basic tips for making it you'll get a delicious custard, with a creamy texture and that vanilla flavor everyone falls for.
Custard is a recipe you can use in many sweet recipes: in pies, tartlets, cakes, with puff pastry, crêpes, mille-feuille... Its use is really widespread, and both its flavor and texture are excellent in sweet recipes (whether on its own or accompanied by fruit, cream, chocolate...). That, of course, if you can resist eating it by the spoonful before using it!
Today we bring you a basic, easy and foolproof recipe so you can make custard at home. With this step-by-step guide and the basic tips you'll see, you'll get pastry-quality custard on the first try!
Ingredients to make custard
- 500ml of milk
- 1 vanilla bean*
- 100 g of sugar
- 40gr of cornstarch (Maizena)
- 4 egg yolks
*If you don't have a vanilla bean, you can use a teaspoon of liquid vanilla extract. Purists will freak out, but the results are excellent as long as you use a quality extract (otherwise it will really ruin the flavor). The authentic Madagascar vanilla extract is a highly recommended option.
De Buyer copper saucepan, Madagascar vanilla extract and Le Creuset ceramic tartlet molds
What utensils do you need?
- An egg separator (optional)
- A bowl
- A saucepan
- Some manual whisks
Preparation
Preparation time: 15 minutes
- Put the milk in the saucepan along with the vanilla bean (without the seeds) and bring it to a boil. After a few seconds, remove the saucepan from the heat and set aside.
- Separate the yolks from the whites manually or with an egg separator.
- In a bowl and using some whisks, mix the yolks with the sugar and cornstarch until everything is integrated.
- Remove the vanilla bean from the milk you set aside earlier and add the milk to the mixture you prepared. You should do it little by little and without stopping stirring, until you obtain a homogeneous mixture.
- Put the mixture back in the saucepan and return it to the heat on low. Keep stirring with a whisk (Note! It's important not to stop stirring, ball-tipped whisks are a great tool for this). After a few minutes you'll see it thickening, and in a few more seconds you'll see the custard is ready.
- Remove from the heat, pour it into a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap. The wrap should touch the custard to prevent a crust from forming.
Notes
- With the amount of ingredients indicated you will obtain about 650 g of custard, which is a generous amount. If you want to make less you only need to reduce the ingredients proportionally.
- A common problem when preparing custard is that the yolks curdle when you add the milk to the mixture. This is due to the high temperature of the milk. To avoid it, just try to let the milk cool a little, or add it gradually (add a few spoonfuls first, and then keep adding it little by little without stopping stirring), to prevent the mixture from heating up too much.
- You can use the custard directly in your recipes, warm or cold (e.g., add it to a pre-baked puff pastry tartlet) or you can add it to doughs that will go into the oven without problem, either as a filling or as an exterior decoration (the custard will hold up well despite the baking).
- You can store homemade custard in the fridge for 3 days.
Now that you know how to make a delicious custard, you might be interested in seeing recipe ideas with custard: here.
