Morning people write breakfast cookbooks, I've decided. People who pop like toast out of bed. People who sing before they brush their teeth. People who don't hide behind the newspaper or the cereal box but are capable of carrying a conversation before draining the first cup of coffee.
Maple custard is the perfect Hyde breakfast. It's smooth, warm, comforting, and delicious. Let's just say it calms the beast.
I am often mistaken for a morning person. With good reason, too, for I am that annoying soul you see running past your window on a drizzly Saturday morning just after seven. Or my feet are hitting the carpet at eight and I'm thinking of bran muffins...I'm reaching for the bowl.
The truth is, for all the mornings I am Jekyll, I am Hyde.
Hyde growls in the morning. He paws through the house, leaving a trail of destruction in his wake. His brain is sore and blurry as he brews coffee, forgetting to add the beans, or puts the milk in the cupboard. And his shirt is on inside out. He hasn't noticed. But a colleague will at ten o'clock in the staff room.
One morning, he left for work at seven thirty and the door wide open behind him. It was winter. The spouse was not impressed.
Hyde still likes breakfast.
Maple custard is the perfect Hyde breakfast. It's smooth, warm, comforting, and delicious. Let's just say it calms the beast.
Maple Custard
four servings
from Marion Cunningham's The Breakfast Book
1 cup milk (or half cream, half milk)
4 eggs
1/2 cup maple syrup
Butter four custard cups. Put a shallow baking pan, half filled with water, in the oven. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
Beat the ingredients together and divide between the four cups. Put the cups in the hot water bath and bake for 20 minutes, or until the custard is barely set. Serve in the cup, or run a knife around the edges of the cups and turn the custards out.
