COCONUT CARAMEL CUSTARD - Rajini's Kitchen

Serves: 6 – 8

Oven Setting: 180°C

Tin: 7″-8″ flan tin (any wider tin will give you a very thin pudding)

Ingredients for the caramel:

Ingredients for the Custard:

Method for Caramel:

This is how I make caramel, but should you be comfortable doing it any other way, feel free to do so. You just need a regular caramel to coat the pan.
Empty the sugar into a wide heavy saucepan over a low flame. Heat it until it appears slightly amber, swirling the pan around.
At the same time, in a small sauce pan, bring the water to a rolling boil.
Carefully pour the boiling water into the sugar (tilt the pan away from you), while stirring the caramel. You will have a bubbling, spluttering saucepan of caramel, so take care.
Boil the caramel until all the sugar completely melts (about 3 minutes) and the syrup turns a little darker.
Pour the hot syrup into the flan tin and swirl it around to coat the base and sides of the tin. Careful when doing this as the syrup will make the flan tin hot. Set aside for later.

Method for Custard:

Pre-heat the oven to 180°C and place a roasting tin or a large deep dish in the centre of the oven with about 1½” of water. Let the water heat up. This is the water bath in which you will set your pudding to cook.
In a large bowl (you will add the milk to this later), whisk the eggs and the vanilla. Set aside.
To a heavy saucepan, add milk, coconut milk, sugar and nutmeg and scald over low heat. It’s important that you make sure you do not let the milk boil but only scald it.
Start by pouring in a ladle full of scalding milk mix into the eggs whisking all the while, followed by another ladle full again as you whisk. This helps prevent the eggs from scrambling.
Now you can pour in the rest of the milk mix into the eggs and whisk it to a smooth custard.
Gently pour the custard into the prepared coated flan tin and place it into the hot water bath in the oven.
Let the custard cook for 40-50 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the pudding comes out clean.
Chill the custard in the tin for 2 hours.
To serve, run a knife along the outer edge of the chilled custard. Place your serving plate upside down on the tin and turn out the custard on to the plate.
A shortcut to the whole process of making custard would be to make it the Instant Caramel Custard way with condensed milk.

Note:

As you can see my family likes it with extra caramel. Feel free to reduce the amount of caramel.
Increase the amount of sugar in the pudding if you like it very sweet. However remember that you will have syrupy caramel on top of the pudding.
An alternative to fresh coconut milk (if you can’t be bothered with the whole process) is to use Dabur Hommade coconut milk, although fresh coconut milk is definitely a lot tastier.
To whisk the milk-mix into the eggs, you can use a regular whisk or a hand held electric beater. While the electric beater is quicker and easier to render a smooth mix, a regular whisk, with a little extra care works just as well.
You can also steam the custard in a pressure cooker. Fill the cooker with 3″-4″of water (you need sufficient water to last the entire cooking time), place a rack in the water and set the custard on a plate over the rack. The custard should not touch the water. Cook without the pressure regulator for about 40 minutes or until a skewer inserted in the centre of the pudding comes out clean..