Eggless vanilla custard with chopped fruits

If each one of us were faced with this question ‘Pick your favourite course of a meal?’, I am sure each one of us would come up with a different thing. My answer would definitely be ‘desserts’. The degree of sweet-madness is so high that sometimes when no dessert is available, I satisfy my incurable sweet tooth with one spoon of sugar or honey or in many cases even Bournvita! I am sure there are a few good-hearted souls out there who do relate to this.

Unsurprisingly, some 70% of my bookmarked recipes also comprise sweet dishes. I have vowed to try out as many of them as possible at my own comfortable pace. Here is a recipe of one of those easy-to-make hearty desserts from my interminable list of bookmarks. This basic recipe of eggless vanilla custard goes very well with any kind of chopped fruits when served chilled and is great with cake when served warm. I prepared this custard, chilled it for about two hours, added it to a bowl of chopped fruits, drizzled some honey over it and added some chopped nuts for a healthy yet wholesome dessert. You could also experiment with various colours and flavours.

Ingredients (serves four)

Milk: 2 cups
Corn starch / Corn flour: 2 tbsp
Sugar: 5 tbsp or more or less to taste
Fruits of choice: chopped
Honey: few tbsp to drizzle on top
Nuts (chopped): according to taste
Vanilla essence: ¾ tsp

Method:

Heat about one and a half cups of milk in a vessel and bring it to a boil.
To the remaining half a cup of milk, add cornstarch and mix well to avoid lumps.
Now add this cornstarch-milk mixture to the milk vessel.
Keep the flame on simmer and keep stirring constantly so that no lumps are formed and there is no sticking and scraping business.
When the mixture comes to a boil, add the sugar and let it boil again.
Let it thicken a bit more.
Take the vessel off the flame and add the vanilla essence and stir well.
Cool this mixture. It will thicken further on cooling. (If you dont want it too thick, you need to reduce the quantity of cornstarch.)

Once it reaches room temperature, chill in the fridge for 2 – 3 hours.
Chop the fruits and assemble them in serving cups.
Pour the custard mixture over it.

Drizzle some honey over it.
Garnish with nuts and serve chilled.
Enjoy!

Since this recipe is from a bookmark, this eggless vanilla custard with chopped fruits goes to ‘Bookmarked Recipes – Every Tuesday’ event by Priya Mitharwal.