Happy Caramel Custard Day everyone!  Yes indeed there is a day for every sort of food imaginable and October 3rd is Caramel Custard Day!  I am celebrating with a Moroccan twist on the classic French dish with an Orange and Cinnamon Creme Caramel.

No one in my family, except me, is a great lover of sweet things.  As a result, I didn’t have too many desserts growing up.  The one thing we did have and which my mum cooked to PERFECTION was a creme caramel.  So, I know what a good creme caramel looks and tastes like.  The caramel needs to be a nanosecond away from bitterness, the custard smooth and silky, the top a shiny mirror glaze and the almost ombre effect of the darker caramel soaked custard at the top and the paler pure custard at the bottom.

My problem is, I have, up until now been absolutely terrible at making it myself!  I tried to make a creme caramel recipe from Cantina THREE times.  Twice the caramel went all crystally.  Another time there was no sauce only a hard set toffee that was stuck to the bottom of each of the serving dishes!

Not so with this recipe which came from Lousie Frank’s Winter which is a fabulous book.  I’ve made many great dishes from it and, as it was a Tasty Reads selection will no doubt pop up here again!

The Recipe

This version of a creme caramel was lovely.  The cinnamon came through quite strongly, the orange not so much.  When I make this again, I will sprinkle some orange zest over the top of the completed desserts to really ramp up the taste of the orange.  You could, of course, leave one or both of them out completely if you are not a lover of orange or cinnamon and this would still be a damn fine Creme caramel.

So on October 3rd what do we say to Caramel Custards?  We say…

Have a great weekend  everyone!