Buffalo Bills party recipes: Maple Natilla Custard – Week 10 at Dolphins

Whether it’s tailgating or homegating, fans of the Buffalo Bills are known to be elite tier when it comes to food. Wingin’ It returns for it’s eighth season of Mad Hatter-esque recipes taking inspiration from the Buffalo Bills and their opponents.

Natilla

There’s an argument to be made that if there’s one category of food I don’t do enough of for this series, it’s desserts. With AFC East teams you’d think I might have given up researching city-inspired, food but with Miami’s deep cultural ties to Cuba there’s still plenty to explore. When you combine both of those ideas you get Cuban desserts and one of those is natilla, a type of custard.

Custard or curd-based desserts can be intimidating, with poor temperature control leading to sweetened scrambled eggs, but I think I have some tips most recipe writers won’t add to help you avoid that. And oh yeah, I give the natilla a little Western New York spin.

Maple Natilla

Serves: about 4
Active Time: 30 minutes
Total Time: 3 hours

Ingredients

3 cups whole milk, divided (2 and 1)
3 Tbsp cornstarch
4 large egg yolks
5 Tbsp granulated maple sugar
1/4 tsp vanilla extract (or rum)
Ground cinnamon

You will need: Medium saucepan, mixing bowls, egg beater, rubber spatula, sieve (optional, see below), ramekins or small bowls for serving, patience

1. Add 2 cups milk to saucepan on LOW.
2. Add remaining 1 cup milk and cornstarch to mixing bowl; combine using egg beater on high speed.
3. Cream egg yolks and maple sugar with egg beater in a separate bowl until smooth.
4. Pour milk/cornstarch mixture over the egg/sugar mixture and combine with egg beater until frothy.
5. Stir vanilla into warmed milk on stove top.
6. Slowly pour the yolk/sugar/milk/cornstarch mixture into the saucepan with the warmed milk. If sugar has not completely dissolved use sieve to pour the mixture into the saucepan.
7. Continue stirring while incrementally increasing heat to MED.
8. Continue stirring until mixture thickens and then continue stirring for another 5-10 min.
9. Pour into serving containers and allow to cool at room temperature for about 10 min.
10. Cover with plastic wrap and chill in the refrigerator until set, about 2 hours.
11. Sprinkle with cinnamon and serve.

Wingin’ It Tips

First and foremost, the most important thing about making custard is that when a recipe calls to “stir continuously” they mean actually continuously. Seriously, don’t stop stirring. If the mixture starts to bubble, it’s too hot and should be turned down. If you cook in a lump, get rid of it, it won’t integrate back into the mixture

You’ll get a pretty obvious thickening, which might seem to come out of nowhere. As noted, keep going for at least a few more minutes.

Recipes for natilla use cinnamon being cooked into the mixture, but this does mean a little different approach with a necessary straining step. It also leads to some juggling...