I didn't make her a cake.
I KNOW. RUDE. Especially since she will make me any blessed cake I request for my birthday, including this monster that takes hours to put together.
But before you get all up in arms about my refusal to bake a cake for the MiL, you should know that she doesn't actually eat cake. Not only does she not really like cake all that much (don't ask me to explain this, but I suppose we all have our strange personality quirks), but she also doesn't digest gluten all that well. So. No cake.
I did ask her if she had any requests for a dessert for her birthday dinner last night, but she was all, "Oh, I think ice cream and maple syrup will be fine." Well, yes, it would be fine, because vanilla ice cream and maple syrup is ALWAYS fine, but I suspected she was just trying to save me some work in the kitchen. While I appreciated her effort, I also thought that surely I could find something she would like for dessert.
Also, if I'm to be honest, something that wouldn't involve two hours, meringues, or the folding in of egg whites. Alsoalso, something that didn't involve cream, because we were out.
It is surprisingly difficult to come up with a non-flour dessert that doesn't require cream. But her request for ice cream and maple syrup gave me an idea. So I did a search for maple custard and found this recipe. And actually, ONLY that recipe. It showed up on several different sites, but that was literally the only recipe for maple custard I found.
Well, except for a scary recipe from Betty Crocker or something that involved maple flavoring and other nastiness. But I dismissed that one right out of hand, because why mess around with maple flavoring when you've got two gallons of actual maple syrup?
And that, I suppose, is the reason for a recipe involving ersatz maple: You will not have two gallons of maple syrup unless you tapped trees and spent days evaporating the resulting sap to make your own syrup. And without that glut of maple syrup, you will probably not be using an entire half cup of it to make custard. Maple syrup is expensive, I know. Half a cup is a lot when you're buying a pint of it at the grocery store for eight bucks.
But! Should you happen to have half a cup of maple syrup that you would like to cook with, then all you need are some eggs and milk and you too can have a delicious, non-cake birthday dessert. Because it WAS delicious. You know, for something that wasn't cake.
4 comments:
It sounds really good and she could have had her ice cream with it as well.
Belated Happy Birthday MIL!
I'll have to try the maple custard recipe. It sounds yummy. I no longer tap trees, but I do buy my syrup by the gallon from a local producer. After growing up with access to barrels of syrup there is no way I could ever use the fake maple flavored high fructose corn syrup or imitation maple extract. I actually buy a gallon every year of the light and then a second gallon of dark maple syrup because they have such different flavors. Light goes on pancakes/waffles and is best for candy making and maple cream, while the dark is used for baking, glazing sweet potatoes,etc.
I just made maple-oatmeal muffins. Real maple syrup, of course! Stop by Compost Happens on Tuesday; I'll post the recipe.
This is when you can feel lucky to have maple trees and glad to have done all that sap boiling. Any recipe that calls for more than 1/4 cup of the lovely stuff always makes me pause and count the cost. I'm just the tiniest bit envious of your two gallons.
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