Epic Food Fail: The Great Custard Fiasco

Everyone makes mistakes. This one was a colossal mistake, made by yours truly. Yes, even I have my epic fail days and this was one of them.

I had a yen for custard, that eggy, creamy, English custard that’s just so rich and good. So I decided to make it myself, since I couldn’t find it in the supermarket. I got the eggs, milk and sugar needed to make the custard. I also found a recipe for it in the Jacques Pepin Complete Techniques book. I followed the recipe very closely. Yeah….



The recipe calls for 8 egg yolks. Separating egg from yolk was no problem. Add sugar and whisk ‘til it flows out in ribbons from the fork. Check. Boil the milk. Got it. This is where it all fell apart – literary. It said to add the egg mixture to the milk, which I had boiling. I didn’t realize that the milk was supposed to cool a bit. I could have also added a few tablespoons of hot milk to the egg mix to temper it. But I didn’t.

I added the egg mix to the boiling milk on the stove, stirring like a mad woman. Then after three to five minutes I poured it into a sieve that was over a large bowl. What came through the sieve was hot water. Left in the sieve were sweet scrambled eggs. Epic Fail! When I added the eggs to the milk they scrambled because of the high temperature and no amount of stirring could save it.

The following day I got the powdered custard and was much more careful.