TWD: Vanilla Almond Custard Cups

For those of you that are visiting me on Tuesday morning, please send good thoughts my way since I am doing a cooking segment on live local TV this morning.

I am on Good Things Utah on ABC4 this morning, along with fellow TWDer's, Lindsey and Becky. I am excited to be doing this because it will hopefull help get the word out to other bloggers here in Utah that we have organized a group, called The Hive (Utah is the Beehive State - get it? Yeah, maybe not that original, but I think the avatar is pretty cute!).

So, if you are here in Utah and love food, cooking, baking and all the fabulous things related to it, well, then check out the avatar over on the sidebar and find out more about the group and how to join.

In the meantime, today is my favorite day of the week because today is Tuesday. If you have been here before then you know that means it is time for Tuesdays with Dorie! If you are new here, then what that means is that myself, along with my fellow TWDer's have made the same recipe from the same book this week - each putting our own spin on it and reviewing it to share with the rest of the blogosphere. This week, Bridget of The Way the Cookie Crumbles (which is where you will find the recipe) chose the Lemon Cup Custard in Baking From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan (this is the book we are all baking our way through together and posting about every Tuesday) - more on that in a post after the show!

So, as the title of this post indicates, I put my own spin on the recipe, not because I don't love lemon, but because that is just what I do. I wanted a flavor that was a little different, so I skipped the lemon this time around and made mine a vanilla/almond flavor.

There was a lot of discussion on this week's P&Q about the texture of this dessert. Some thought it was like a smooth custard, others thought it was more like a flan or just too 'eggy'. Personally, I am not a flan fan, but I haven't missed a week yet and wasn't going to start now. I went ahead and made a half portion of the recipe and added 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste and a 1/4 teaspoon of pure almond extract to the custard. I used some cute little cups that I found a while ago and couldn't resist to bake my custard in.

So. What did I think of it? Well. It was like flan. But it was very smooth and silky and yes, had kind of a gelatinous mouth feel. It was kind of like eating a very creamy and rich cup of jello. It wasn't like a pudding in my opinion. Was it my favorite? Not really, no. Did I have fun making it? Yes. Should you try it for yourself? Yes.

The flavor was subtle and really nice. To make it even more fun I decided to add some texture to two of the cups. On one of the cups I just bruleed a bit of sugar and sprinkled some finely chopped almonds on the other.

To see more variations of this week's recipe, visit the Tuesdays with Dorie blogroll!