Creamy, custardy and packed full of coffee – meet your new favourite dessert
“One of the greatest things the French introduced to Vietnam was coffee! Today, Vietnam is one of the world’s biggest coffee producers, and there are coffee shops on every corner.
The locals like to drink their coffee with sweetened condensed milk, so here I have used condensed milk and Vietnamese coffee beans to make delicious coffee custard cups.”
Ingredients
• 25g finely ground Vietnamese coffee
• 80ml boiling water
• 700ml milk
• 2 tablespoons condensed milk
• 8 free-range eggs
• 150g sugar
• 1 teaspoon Dutch cocoa powder, for dusting
• small violets, to garnish (optional)
Method
1 Preheat the oven to 180˚C. In a heatproof bowl, combine the coffee and boiling water, stirring to dissolve the coffee. Now add the milk and condensed milk and mix well.
2 In a separate mixing bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar until the sugar has completely dissolved.
3 Stir the egg mixture into the condensed milk mixture, then strain the entire mixture through a fine sieve, into a jug. Skim any bubbles off the surface.
4 Slowly pour the custard into eight small coffee cups. Place the cups in a roasting tin, then transfer the roasting tin to the oven.
5 Pour enough hot water into the roasting tin to reach two-thirds up the side of the cups. 6 Bake for 45–60 minutes, or until the custards have set and have a jelly-like consistency.
7 Remove from the oven and allow to cool, then chill in the refrigerator for 3 hours. Dust with cocoa powder before serving and garnish with violets if desired.
Recipe courtesy of Luke Nguyen, extracted from Luke Nguyen’s France