Plum Custard

Today, I decided to push the boat out and prepare something special. The main course was pork chops smothered in a creamy apple and cider sauce with steamed new potatoes and peas and green beans. The pork chops were fried for a few minutes each side, then grilled for a further few minutes (almost setting the fire alarm off), before being put in a casserole dish, covered with a jar of sauce and finished in the oven.

The plum bake was cooked from scratch. Mum had given me some windfall plums at the weekend and they needed using up quickly. I cut the plums in half and destoned them, and lined a buttered dish with them. They were sprinkled with 2 tablespoons of sugar. That was the easy bit. I then had to separate 3 eggs. They had paper thin eggshells and by the second egg, I had got yoke in the egg white. I had to throw that away and ended up with 3 egg yolks and 2 whites! The yokes were then whisked with lemon zest and 2oz of sugar. I am new to hand whisking and took the whisk out of the mixture while it was still whizzing! Cue a few minutes of cleaning up. 7fl oz of single cream were heated to nearly boiling and folded into the egg mix, then sieved back into the pan and heated until the mixture thickened. The whisk had been washed and dried before whisking the egg whites and a pinch of baking soda to stiff peaks. A repeat of before then occurred, so another few minutes of cleaning up! This was then folded into the egg mixture and poured over the plums. Finally, the dish was put into a baking tray which had an inch of cold water in, and cooked in a 180C oven for about 35 minutes.

It seemed like a lot of work because I was quite disorganized and caused problems that then had to be put right. It was a fabulous dessert that we both really enjoyed and I will not be making the same mistakes next time I make it!