Baked Custard

.I absolutely adore baked custard. It's my ultimate comfort food. My mother would make it for me when I was home sick, which for the most part only occured when I got strep throat. It feels so nice on a soar throat.



5 eggs
1/4 - 1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 cups of heated milk
nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Many recipes call for a higher temperature, but it's been my experience that this will cause the custards to curdle, and you don't want that. Now if you were to use 8 egg yolks instead of 5 eggs you would have less chance of curdling. Or maybe even if you used half and half instead of the 1% milk I used. But mine did turn out wonderfully smooth and silky feeling.
Put the eggs and the sugar and the vanilla in a bowl and whip thoroughly.
Put the milk in a glass pitcher and heat in the microwave until just a bit warmer than lukewarm. That's a temperature you can stick you finger into but it's not so hot as to be uncomfortable. Maybe it's the temperature of a hot bath.
While whisking the eggs, slowly pour in the milk.  If you want to be completely correct you can pour the mixture through a sieve into another bowl.  This strains out any funny egg bits.

Get all the custard cups you want to use into a baking pan.  You can use any appropriate sized dish, even tea cups.  But it is best if all the cups you use are the same size, as different sizes cook at different rates.  Put a tea kettle of water on to boil.  Ladle the custard mixture into the custard cups. I use a 1/2 cup ladle.  Put some nutmeg on top of each custard. I used whole nutmeg and a nutmeg grater, but pre-grated works.

Carefully place the pan of filled custard cups into the heated oven and then carefully pour in hot water to come about half way up the cups. Then carefully slide the pan all the way into the oven.   Actually, I pull the rack out just a bit and when the water is in I slowly slide the rack back into the oven.  Bake for about 55 minutes.  Eat one as soon as your mouth can handle the heat.  But these are great warm or cold or room temperature.

Note: I made this later using just egg yolks. It was ever so smooth, but not as tasty or fun to eat. I'm sticking with the whole eggs.