waffles and custard

In my search for a blogging topic I looked up on Google what I had for dinner last night- waffles and custard. It returned only three hits, so I guess this wonderful food pairing isn't as prevalent as I thought it was. So if you haven't heard of waffles and custard then you need to give it a try. Just make some Bisquick waffles (if you have a waffle iron that isn't a Belgian waffle iron it is better), and a batch of soft custard recipe (see below, because the internet also fails when it comes to a good soft custard recipe) and then you will have a awesome breakfast style diner -also cook some eggs and bacon and make some orange juice to finish off the meal.

Soft Custard (because the internet doesn't know how to make it... yet)
Ingredients:
3 eggs
3/4c sugar
4Tbs cornstarch
pinch of salt
4 1/2c milk
1tsp vanilla

Mix the eggs, sugar, cornstarch, and salt in a pan, add 1/2c of milk and stir until mixed. Heat under med-low heat. From now on you must stir the custard until it is done, if you don't you will make scrambled eggs. While the pan mixture is heating up you should microwave 2 cups of milk until very warm but not boiling (nuke for 2 minutes or so). Add the milk to the pan, then microwave 2 more cups of milk and add that to the pan as well.
Now that all the ingredients are added except the vanilla it is just a matter of stirring until it gets thick, you may turn the heat up to medium, but the higher the heat the faster you have to stir, so heat according to how much you want to work. When the custard starts to get thick... a little less thick than pudding, you can turn off the heat and add the vanilla (error on the side of too runny rather than too thick... if it gets too thick that means it is getting to hot which means the eggs might clump together). Let the custard stand for about 5 or 10 minutes to thicken up more and then serve on the waffles that someone was making while you were making the custard... you did have somebody make waffles while you were making the custard right?

Enjoy.

Coke Caramel Corn

This morning when I was mostly asleep I had an idea. I was asleep so it kind of was a weird idea, but I was still awake enough to keep focused on the idea and work it out. My idea was to boil Coke down and then use the syrup to make caramel corn. I dreamed/pondered it for a while and then when I woke I dismissed it as just crazy talk.

Unfortunately my brain wouldn't stop thinking about it, so after being up for an hour or so I gave in and gave it a whirl. This is what I did:

I took 2 cups of Coke and dissolved 1/4 of brown sugar in it (I didn't know if the corn syrup in the Coke would allow for the boiled down liquid to get hard when it cooled, so I needed to add crystal sugar to be sure, and yes, I thought of adding this while still sleeping). I boiled this mixture down for a good long while, probably twenty minutes in total.

During this time I microwaved some "home style" popcorn. Home style popcorn has salt on butter on it, I wasn't thrilled about the butter part, but that is all i had, so that is what I used. After the Coke mixture got foamy for a minute or so I took it off the heat and added the popcorn (actually I had to do this in two batches because the skillet was to small.) I dished out the coated popcorn into bowls, and viola! Caramel Coke Popcorn.

I think the biggest surprise is that the popcorn actually tasted good. It was alot like normal caramel corn after it cooled, but it was still a bit sticky. There was much more flavor in the caramel, but I don't really think it tasted like Coke. I guess I would call this a successfully dreamt recipe, but then again probably any recipe that doesn't kill you that was invented while sleeping is a win overall.