A simple, elegant custard made from fresh summer truffles. Serve it as a dessert garnished with fresh berries or more shaved truffle.
What is a Royale Custard?
Royale custard is one that is made purely with egg yolks instead of whole eggs. I designed this for my girlfriend who can't have too much cow dairy, but likes truffles.
You can mix and match different dairy as you like, cream will naturally give you a richer final dish, half and half will work fine too. Using milk like I've done here makes for a custard with a lighter body. This is a companion recipe to my post on infusing eggs and the solubility of truffle aroma into fatty substances like egg yolk here.
Types of truffle to use
Infusing cream and dairy with raw truffles is one of the most efficient ways to capture their flavor since the truffles are infused into the liquid. This makes it easy for truffles with a lighter flavor (like the summer truffles pictured) to be used. You could use Oregon black or white truffles, Tuber brumale, Blue Ridge Truffles. If you have some money to burn, French black Perigord truffles are the most potent.
Black Truffle Custard Royale
Equipment
- 6 4 oz Custard dishes
Ingredients
- 2 cups half and half
- 7 large egg yolks
- ¼ cup honey or maple syrup or more to taste
- 5-10 grams grated fresh black summer truffle plus a few slices to garnish
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon high quality vanilla extract
Instructions
- A day or two before baking, whisk all the ingredients together and refrigerate.
- To cook, pour the mixture into ½ cup custard dishes, place in a hot water bath and bake for 25 minutes at 300 degrees, or until the custards are just set.
- The custards should jiggle a bit, but should not look broken or watery.
- Remove the pan from the oven and allow to cool, uncovered at room temperature.
- If you've never baked custards in a water bath before, research it before attempting.
- Finally, wrap each custard dish in plastic wrap, label, date, and refrigerate.
- Serve cool or gently warmed with extra fresh truffle on top.
Notes
Nutrition
Adriana Gutierrez
Sounds wonderful! Looking for dessert for a truffle tasting menu. Thinkimg this will be a great filling for cannolis.
Alan Bergo
This would be a bit loose for canoli. I would use pastry cream.
Kathryn
Hi there, just wanted to point out your picture is not what people usually call 'black truffle' (Tuber melanosporum or French Perigord black truffles - harvested in winter). It looks like Tuber aestivum (summer truffle which is considered not as delicious as the Perigord). It's just that there's a lot of confusion out there about truffles! Perigord T.melanosporum are much darker inside when they are ripe.
Alan Bergo
I'm familiar with a number of varieties. You can use any "black truffle" here so it's kind of a moot point. The only difference in description would be "black summer truffle" which would be a little more specific.