Buttery Brown Sugar Egg Custard - or - Bread Pudding

Buttery Brown Sugar Egg Custard -or- Bread Pudding**

This is a big departure from a basic recipe I found to use as a guide. I wanted to make egg custard, but I also wanted butter in the recipe, so I made modifications and took all sorts of liberties to create this.  It would also be easy to turn into bread pudding.**

In a small bowl, stir together:

1c brown sugar

*2T flour – for custard

1t ground nutmeg (or pumpkin pie spice)

¼t salt

**3-4 slices of good crusty bread cut in cubes – for bread pudding (walnuts or pecans, and raisins can also be added)

Next, whisk:

3 eggs well then add

1-2T pure vanilla

Cook:

1½c milk to the scalding point, not boiling.

Basically what I do is, heat this until it starts steaming and sort of wiggling in the pan :o) but NOT bubbling. At this point, remove from heat and stir in:

2T soft butter

Combine the stirred dry ingredients with the beaten eggs. Add a little of the hot milk mixture whisking the whole time to 'temper' it – slowly raising the temperature of the eggs so as not to cook them. Continue adding the hot milk mixture a little at a time until well blended. Pour mixture into a buttered 8” baking pan. Bake as is, or put the custard pan into a larger pan then fill with water. This creates a more even temperature in which to bake the custard. I omitted this step.

Bake custard* at 400° for 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 325° and continue to bake another 35 minutes, until a kitchen knife inserted half way to the center comes out clean. I turned my oven off after a total of 45 minutes then let it rest, in the oven, another 5 minutes or so before taking it out to cool. You may need to play around with the temperature. For instance turn it down to 300° but leave it in 40-50 minutes at that point, for a total baking time of 50-60 minutes.

Bake bread pudding** at 350° for 35-50 minutes, until a kitchen knife inserted halfway to the center comes out clean. . .Lin