caramel bread pudding recipe | steamed caramel custard bread pudding (2024)

FAQs

What's the difference between caramel pudding and caramel custard? ›

The main difference is the ingredient used as a thickening agent. Eggs are an essential ingredient in custard, as they give the dessert its gelatinous texture. Instead of egg proteins, flour or cornstarch are thickeners in puddings.

Custard primarily relies on eggs and dairy, while pudding uses milk or cream, sugar, and a starch thickener like cornstarch or tapioca. Custard tends to be smoother and more velvety due to the egg content, whereas pudding has a thicker, more gelatinous consistency because of the added starch.

Caramel custard is also known as Flan and Crème Caramel and there are regional variations to how it is served. A runny custard is a sign that it has not been fully cooked and so is not setting. You want to take it out of the oven when it appears firm but has just a slight wobble to it.

While most custard and pudding recipes both typically call for eggs, the main difference is that pudding uses a starch for thickening, whereas custard's thickening agent is the egg itself (or egg yolk, in most instances). Custard's texture also tends to be firmer than pudding.

The crème caramel isn't smooth and has a lot of bubbles on the surface. Foamy mixture: The custard base was whisked too vigorously. Whisk the egg and sugar very gently. If you incorporate a lot of air bubbles, you'll have to skim the foam off the custard before baking it.

It's a spectacular substitute in recipes that normally call for cooking eggs and dairy to make a custard (like pastry cream).

Puddings made for dessert can be boiled and steamed puddings, baked puddings, bread puddings, batter puddings, milk puddings or even jellies. In some Commonwealth countries these puddings are known as custards (or curds) if they are egg-thickened, as blancmange if starch-thickened, and as jelly if gelatin-based.

Bavarian creams are custards stiffened with gelatin. Savoury custards are sometimes encountered, the most notable being quiche, a French tart with a filling of custard flavoured with cheese, onions, ham or bacon, or chopped vegetables.

3 Varieties of Custard

There are three main varieties of custard: baked custard, stirred custard, and steamed custard. The first two are both popular in Western cuisine. Baked custard is typically firmer and made with whole eggs, while stirred custards can be much runnier and often only contain the yolks.

For each cup (240 mL) of caramel sauce that you need to thicken, run 1 tbsp (14.7 mL) of cold water into a measuring cup, and slowly stir in 1 tbsp of cornstarch. Pour the cornstarch mixture into your pot caramel sauce, and stir constantly. Keep the sauce on low heat until it begins to thicken.

Why is my homemade caramel so hard? ›

This is usually caused by sugar crystals stuck to the side of the pan that didn't get fully dissolved. It only takes one to set off a chain reaction, and before you know it you have crunchy caramel.

However, custard (and therefore flan) is made with eggs and sweetened milk alongside the cream, and flan itself includes caramel. On the other hand, pudding is made with sugar and some kind of starch to thicken the mixture (usually flour or cornstarch).

American puddings are closer to what the Brits would call "custard." A British pudding is a dish, savory or sweet, that's cooked by being boiled or steamed in something: a dish, a piece of cloth, or even animal intestine.

Custard is set in one of three different ways: with eggs, starch, or gelatin. Crème brûlée, pots de crème, and flan are thickened with egg; in contrast, pastry cream and American-style cheesecake often employ cornstarch or flour. Gelatin is used to add a gel-like consistency to Bavarian cream and most mousse recipes.

Caramel can be produced in so many forms such as, sauce, a chewy candy, or a hard candy because of how much of an ingredient is added and the temperature it is being prepared at.

The custard has a smooth texture, and the caramel layer on top is sweet and slightly sticky. Crème caramel differs from crème brûlée, a similar French dessert, in that chefs harden the caramelized sugar topping of crème brûlée with a blowtorch after the dessert finishes baking.

Unlike pudding, mousse is not cooked and the addition of air to the mixture leads to a fluffier consistency and lighter texture. Mousse is typically served chilled or frozen. Custard is made by cooking the milk and sugar base and adding whole eggs to thicken the mixture.

But if you're interested in making your own flan or egg pudding, you should know what you're working with. What it comes down to is this: Flan is a custard and egg pudding is usually a pudding — but not always. Caramel is also involved, but we'll get into that later.