Making these (aside from the custard) is a really great beginners recipe or cooking with the kids idea. Whisking the custard is a bit attention heavy and gets pretty hot so make it ahead of time and then let the kids get in and help you do all the assembly!
I used caster sugar which a special kind of baking sugar. Caster sugar is a fine grain sugar that dissolves almost instantly. Since caster sugar is so fine and light it is ideal for making custards, whipped desserts, meringues, and soufflé.
Fun fact of the day... I wanted to highlight one area of the recipe: scalding the milk for the custard. This process used to be done for safety purposes in many old recipes, which isn’t really necessary anymore since we have modern pasteurization. So in many older recipes it’s no longer really necessary.
But in custard making (and some bread recipes) scalding the milk actually does have a purpose. In this case we heat the milk to kick start the cooking process and set the eggs into a custard. It also helps the sugar dissolve and flavors to blend.
But in bread making, scalding the milk causes some of the whey proteins to deactivate which allows the gluten in the bread to properly form and the bread to rise properly. This makes breads lighter and sponge cakes springier! Pretty cool.