"custard" news and stories

I've never made ice cream. It's one of those foods that I think it's unnecessary to make because what you can buy in the store is just as good (if not better) than what you could make at home. I feel the same way about pasta.

But I was reading one of Andy Rooney's books (he's one of my favorite writers) and he makes ice cream a lot. He has a very simple recipe, and it doesn't include eggs at all. He says that if you add eggs, it's not ice cream, it's custard. He was on Martha Stewart's show one time, making ice cream, and she agreed that adding eggs was a bad idea. But when she was on CBS a while later, she made ice cream, and she added eggs!

So I'm curious: who's right in this? Is ice cream better with no eggs? Do eggs make it richer in some way, or just turn it into something else?

A good cannelé is one of the things that foodies will spend years seeking. Typically, it is a small pastry with a custardy center and slightly crisp/chewy, intensely caramelized crust. There are special molds available to achieve the proper, traditional shape, but having the molds alone doesn't give you the ability to produce a good cannelé, and so there are few bakeries (especially in the US) that carry the French delicacies. Once you know how to make them, however, it seems like it is possible to do so in a good metal pan of any shape. Melissa, from The Traveler's Lunchbox, has clearly take a page from the Pimp That Snack book with her utterly amazing Cannelé Colossus, which she made in a full-sized bundt pan. Her spectacular pastry took three hours to bake, in addition to a fairly long prep time, but it was worth every second.

It's not often that you hear a food blogger, though they are quite generous with praise, describe a dish in just one word: fantastic.

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Lemon bars are tricky things, though they seem deceptively simple. In theory, they consist of a tart, custardy layer on a shortbread-type base, but the vast majority of recipes miss the mark by miles, with fillings that are day-glo neon yellow, too hard, too soft, too tart or too sweet. The crusts tend to fare better than the fillings, but it can still be a challenge to get a good one when the filling actually turns out properly.

The only thing harder than making a really good batch of lemon bars is taking a picture of them. The yellow lemon filling and the pale yellow base do not make for much contrast, and since the bars are often topped with a coating of powdered sugar, you end up with something remarkably unphotogenic, no matter how good they look in person. I am please to say, however, that it looks like Lemon Bars were conquered by Sugar Delirium. Not only does her photo look fantastic, but the recipe for the bars sounds like it turns out a perfectly balanced treat.

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If you're not down at the boardwalk, it could be a little bit harder to find frozen custard. Though the rich, ice cream-like treat is very popular in some parts of the country, other stands are few and far between. There is a resource available to frozen custard lovers: the CustardList. This website not only has the locations for various custard stands around the country, but maintains a record of what daily flavors are offered at many locations! You can even get this information while you are out driving to the stand, since they have a setup that allows you to access the database of current flavors via a web-enabled cell phone.

To make your search for a stand easier, you can narrow the field by searching by state. Twenty different states have custard stands listed at the moment, and if you know of one that isn't listed, you can submit it to be added.

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Bread pudding is almost a souffle for cheaters. Because of the eggs in it, it puffs up a bit in the oven, but the bread gives it enough structure that it never falls. The bread also keeps the custard component of the pudding from cracking or facing any of the other flaws that can strike a cooked custard. What this all boils down to is the fact that bread puddings are incredibly easy and will taste great almost without regard for what you do to them. How can you argue with that?

For this bread pudding, I started with the basic recipe in the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, which is a great source for basic recipes. I changed it by adding dried cherries and using challah bread for added richness. I topped it off with a delicious dessert sauce. The final dish is homey, comforting and very delicious. It can be put together very quickly and served either warm or cold, so it is just as good for entertaining as it is for quiet nights at home.