Evolution of recipes is a fascinating thing. Recipe follow people and mingle with other recipes resulting in delightful consequences. Check any pastry shop in India and you would find a medley of products that are reminiscent of the bygone British era. Some recipes have even become extinct elsewhere but still continue with strong patronage here. Cream horns for instance. This article in Sunday's livemint tells tales of delicacies made out of pastry filled fresh cream and jam which were once popularized by the British in India. You can still find these in local pastry and bakery shops across India. I suspect pineapple pastry and black forest cake also belong to the same genre. Another dinosaur, the boiled custard, captured the imagination of Indians like no other. You can still find the yellow boxes of Brown and Polson vegetarian custard mix boxes which claim to be vegetarian custard are little more than yellow coloring, cornflour and vanilla essence in every grocery store.
Custard reminds me of summer vacations at my grandmother's. The yellow custord and the jiggling red rasperry jelly captured 5 year old me's imagination much like my ancestors. And if I was really good, I would get a mango pieces with it.
I didn't want the out-of-a-yellow-box version to satisfy today's craving. After hunting around a little, I came across one in The Kitchn. On one of these rare instances, I followed the recipe verbatim. I can now understand why people prefer the from-scratch version. The box version does not do it justice at all!
While the recipe was good, I would probably cut the sugar in half the next time to suit my tastes. I prefer custard to be vehicles of other goodies and not an end in itself.
I took some really bad pics this time. Will try to get some next time! Promise.
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