a bowl filled with burn't honey baked custard

Emily Cuddeford & Rachel Morgan: Burnt Honey Baked Custard

25 minutes - 27 minutes

Serves 4-6

This recipe is from the book Kitchen Table: Simple Things Made Well by Emily Cuddeford and Rachel Morgan

This is very similar to a crème brûlée custard – you can either serve it warm not long from the oven, or, my favourite way, chill it in the fridge, which I find improves the texture so that it becomes silky and smooth.

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Method

1 Preheat the oven to 140°C fan.

2 Start by making the burnt honey. To do this, start off by melting the honey then boiling it until it reaches 170°C – it will be turning a dark amber by this point. Turn off the heat and add 2 tablespoons of water – be careful and stand back while you do this, as the honey will boil and spit. Use recently boiled water for less drama. This stops the honey from setting solid. Leave to cool either in the pan or in a heatproof dish.

3 Heat the cream, milk and all the sugar in a pan until steaming. In a bowl whisk the egg yolks with the cooled honey. Once the milk is steaming, pour it over the eggs and whisk to combine, you don’t want to whisk too much, as it makes a foam on top. I add 4g of sea salt, as I like the balance with the sweetness, but add 2g then taste and see how much you want, you can always add more but you can’t take it away.

4 Pour it into a 30cm pie dish or similar. I skim off any bubbles or foam, more for appearance than for technical reasons of flavour or texture. This needs to be baked in a bain-marie, which is essentially placing the custard in a larger tin or dish and filling it up halfway with boiling water. It stops the custard cooking too quickly and scrambling the eggs.

5 Bake for 25–27 minutes – it will still have a jiggle in the middle but it will set as it cools.

NOTES
You can also make this in ramekins for individual servings – they will still need to bake in a bainmarie, but check them after 18 minutes. You can eat this with roasted or fresh fruits depending on what season you are in. If you want to turn it into crème brûlée, sprinkle the top of the chilled custard with caster sugar and either place under a hot grill or use a blowtorch until the sugar has caramelised and made a crispy coating.