Food and fellowship Pt.3 (berry crumble, homemade vanilla custard recipes)

There are 3 girls in the kitchen now as my dancing friend from Colorado joins us late from her theatre. Although the caffeine in my system is wrecking havoc with my delegation skills these two girls are awesome cooks and I love that even though they are mocking me for my crazy were having a blast attempting far too many recipes at one time.

People often say "oh I'm more of a cook" or "I'm more of a baker."
I'm neither, I just like to feed people and create environments where people can make friends with strangers and feel they can talk about important things and pray for each other.  I put it down to my mum for not liking to cook and then having 3 alpha male sons.... and to my pastors wife in NZ who taught me all about food and fellowship and catering for ridiculous numbers of people at the last minute.

On that note I make my crowd favourite

BERRY CRUMBLE
SCRIPT:
3-4 C Mixed frozen berries
1 lemon zested and juiced
1T sugar
2T water
1C white flour
1C coconut
1C rolled oats
1/2 C melted butter
1/2 C brown sugar
2t cinnamon

METHOD:
Put berries, water, lemon juice, 1t sugar in a pot on the stove.  At a low heat allow berries to melt but don't boil them down as it's nicer to have the berries still whole.  Taste and add more sugar if you want
it.  I like sour and tart flavours.  Once the berries are done put them in the bottom of a pie dish.
For the crumble combine all dry ingredients and with your hands mix in the butter, brown sugar and lemon zest until it sticks together but isn't to wet.
Crumble on top of the berries and sprinkle with cinnamon.
Cook for approx 20minutes on 180 C or until golden brown on top.

On this particular night I didn't have any coconut so we crushed up some fresh almonds.  Also I used my left over cinnamon, honey syrup from the pancakes (1st blog) to combine the crumble mixture instead of butter and brown sugar.
Feel free to ad more or less of any ingredient until the right consistency is reached for the size dish you are using.

accompanying the Crumble is my new favourite recipe (I have this thing for custard)

HOMEMADE VANILLA CUSTARD

SCRIPT:

570ml  milk

55ml single cream

1 vanilla pod or ½ tsp vanilla extract

4 eggs, yolks only

30g caster sugar

2 level tsp cornflour

METHOD:

1. Bring the milk, cream and vanilla pod to simmering point slowly over a low heat.

2. Remove the vanilla pod (wash the vanilla pod, dry and store in jar with caster sugar to make vanilla sugar).

3. Whisk the yolks, sugar and cornflour together in a bowl until well blended.

4. Pour the hot milk and cream on to the eggs and sugar, whisking all the time with a balloon whisk.

5. Return to the pan, (add vanilla extract if using) and over a low heat gently stir with a wooden spatula until thickened.

6. Pour the custard into a jug and serve at once.

7. To keep hot, stand the jug in a pan of hot water and cover the top with cling film to prevent skin forming.

Serve with vanilla ice cream if you like and eat it cold for breakfast the next morning if you like.  

We sat and digested, talked, laughed and bonded and eventually left the Ruby player with the leftovers and made our way home happy from a 12 hour day together bonding, meeting randoms, getting lost and wet, cooking and eating.