Creme Caramel - A Healthy(ish) Version

Last Sunday I was, as always, tasked with making the pudding. I usually do some variant on chocolate, but as my brother wasn't home, I decided to branch out a little bit with creme caramel! This is a really quick, easy recipe that can be made in advance - great for Sunday roasts when the oven/hob are full anyway.

To make 4 individual creme caramels, you will need:

• 2 large eggs (to be even healthier, you could use 3 egg whites and one yolk, but I didn't want to have yolks left over)
• 400ml skimmed milk
• 100g caster sugar
• A vanilla pod, halved
• 4 ovenproof ramekins

Step 1: To make the caramel sauce, put half of the sugar and about a tablespoon of water into a saucepan. Heat it gently. Once it starts to bubble, do not stir, but shake the saucepan around a little to prevent it from burning. As soon as it is golden take it off the heat and pour into the ramekins. Make sure you give it a quick taste at this point - if you have cooked it for too long, the caramel will taste horrid!

Step 2: Pour the milk into another saucepan. Cut half of the vanilla pod open, scrape the seeds out and put them in the saucepan too. (Tip: if you put the leftover half of the vanilla pod into a bag of sugar, it will make really yummy vanilla sugar you can use in your next baking session). Heat the milk until tiny little bubbles appear, then take off and leave to one side to cool a bit.

Step 3: Crack the eggs into a large bowl, then pour in the sugar and whisk until smooth and a little fluffy.

Step 4: Pour the milk mixture into the bowl too and whisk again. (You could use a sieve at this point, but mine was in the dishwasher. Just keeping it real here...!)

Step 5: Put the ramekins into a fairly deep baking tray, and divide the mixture between them.

Step 6: Put the tray into the oven at around 130-140 degrees celsius, then pour boiling water into the tray until it reaches about half way up the side of the ramekins. Bake for around 20 minutes, or until the creme caramels are set to the touch, but still very wobbly.

Step 7: Take them out of the oven and leave to cool in the ramekins. When you're ready to eat them, just tip them out and dig in! You could garnish with a sprig of mint or something, but let's face it, who's got time for that?!