Learning how to cook is, generally speaking, good for you. When you home cook food you usually wouldn’t dare add the same amounts of oil, butter, and sugar that you’d regularly find in restaurant dishes. And let’s not even consider fast food! But there are exceptions, of course. In my case, a most notable example is discovering how easy it is to make custard. Not the powdered stuff, but real, rich, velvety, delicious custard. It only takes three or four ingredients, roughly measured, and a little bit of patience when stirring. Once you get over the fear of scrambling it, you realise you can have proper custard any time you want. Just writing about now is making me drool, and I’ve only just had lunch! The only thing that saves me from myself, sometimes, is a lack of cream in the fridge. I usually use a combination of milk and cream to give the custard extra richness and flavour, and cream is the only ingredient I don’t always have on hand.
But nothing will save me now! Wanting a super-chocolatey sauce to go with some steamed puddings, I came up with a new recipe. With the richness coming from a hefty pile of dark chocolate, this custard needs no cream, oh no! (Oh yes!) Of course there is always chocolate in the pantry, so now all I have now is willpower (oh dear).
This stuff is seriously delicious and moorish. Serve it warm with cakes, puddings, or fresh fruit. There are tonnes of strawberries about at the moment, a perfect match!
- 3 egg yolks
- 1/4 cup caster sugar
- 1 cup milk
- 75g good quality dark (70%) chocolate, chopped finely
- Add the milk to a small saucepan and heat gently until it is scalding (don’t let it boil).
- While the milk is warming, whisk together egg yolks and sugar in heat proof bowl until creamy.
- Slowly add the hot milk to the yolk mixture, whisking all the time, until well combined.
- Return to the saucepan over a low heat. Add the chocolate and cook, stirring regularly, until the custard thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon (about 10 minutes, it will thicken further as it cools). Take care not to overheat it or you’ll get lumpy custard!