Egg Custard Pie
Egg custard pie is easy, light, and delicious. This old fashioned southern dessert is the perfect light dessert after a heavy meal like Thanksgiving or Christmas. By using evaporated milk in this egg custard pie recipe, this dessert is light in not only taste but also calories. If you want to learn about the easiest pie to make, keep reading.
Easy Egg Custard Pie Recipe
Like many Southern dishes such as chess pie, egg custard pie is likely of British origin. Although recipes differ, most egg custard pie recipes combine milk, eggs, and sugar, along with nutmeg, to make a rich custard filling. Even if you have never had an egg custard pie, if you have had a pumpkin pie, sweet potato pie, or butternut squash pie, you have eaten a custard pie. Custard pies are known for being smooth and creamy, so the liquid of choice can either be milk, cream, half and half, sweetened condensed milk, or evaporated milk. By developing an egg custard pie with evaporated milk, I managed to achieve a smooth, creamy texture without any added butter or fat to keep the milk from curdling: if you cook with low-fat dairy, you run the risk of having the protein molecules clump together and form unattractive balls in your dish. However, by using evaporated milk, the reduced water content greatly lowers the risk of curdling.
Although most old fashioned egg custard pie recipes include nutmeg, nutmeg is not my favorite spice: I don’t hate it, but it is usually not my first choice. So, I decided to leave out the nutmeg and replace some of the white sugar with light brown sugar. I really like using a mixture of white and light brown sugar in my pies; in fact, if you read my recipes for apple pie, peach pie, sweet potato pie, and butternut squash pie, you will see that combining white sugar and light brown sugar in equal quantities is one of my cooking techniques. By adding some brown sugar, I am able to give the pie a bit of extra flavor without overwhelming the main flavor of the pie: egg custard.
Making the pie filling uses just a few ingredients and takes just a few minutes. However, once in the oven, you may notice that it puffs up during the baking process. Although I did get a quick video clip of the pie puffing up, I wish I had my camera when I took it out of the oven: it was truly impressive. However, once the pie had cooled down, it deflated completely.
Although you may doubt that a pie with such a few ingredients and so easy to make would be good, this pie was delicious. Even though it has been a while since I last had flan, the taste reminded me of flan: milk, eggs, and caramelized sugar. The bit of brown sugar added a hint of extra flavor without taking over the pie, but next time I will follow the standard recipes and use white sugar with a bit of nutmeg. If you do not like eggs, you may not like this pie since it had a strong egg taste; however, if you like custard, flan, or French vanilla ice cream, you will love this easy pie recipe: it is the perfect dessert for the holidays.
Light Dessert After A Heavy Meal
Egg custard pie is the perfect light dessert after a heavy meal like Thanksgiving or Christmas. If you have to make a lot of dishes for a heavy meal such as cornbread dressing, cranberry sauce, and macaroni and cheese for Thanksgiving, the last thing you might want to do is to make a double crust pie or a layer cake, so egg custard pie is great because it is quick and uses just a few ingredients. Moreover, this pie is light and not overly sweet, so it is the perfect light dessert after a heavy meal if you want something sweet and old fashioned but not heavy. Thus, if you are looking for Thanksgiving or Christmas dessert ideas, recipe is the perfect holiday dessert.
Egg Custard Pie Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup evaporated milk (240g)
- 1/2 cup white sugar (105g)
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar (120g)
- 4 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 1, 9-inch unbaked pie shell
Instructions
- 1. Pour ingredients for filling into a bowl and beat for 2-3 minutes.
- 2. Pour filling mixture into a 9-inch unbaked pie shell
- 3. Bake at 350 F for 60 minutes (if your pie inflates, so not be alarmed: it will deflate when cool)
Egg Custard Pie Recipe Video
Be sure to watch my YouTube video recipe tutorial:
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Custard_pie
