Someone once said to me, “There are lemon people and there are chocolate people, and they’re not the same animal.” It struck a chord, because I’m so deeply identified as a chocolate person, it’s always been unfathomable to me that someone would order anything else for dessert.
Lo, and behold, I married a bona fide, living, breathing, lemonophile. He goes crazy for lemon bars, lemon souffles, lemon desserts of all kinds. He likes chocolate, but citrus is his first love. Maybe it’s from all those years growing up near orange groves in central Florida.
The man could write a dissertation on creamsicles. To me, creamsicles always tasted like baby aspirin, but hey, no accounting for taste. [Egads, I just did a quick search for creamsicles and came up with nada. Is it possible they’ve died and gone to creamsicle heaven?]
I remember we went to Magnolia Grill in Durham, NC, and after studying Karen Barker’s world-class dessert menu, he announced that he was going to get the “pink grapefruit napoleon.” I laughed out loud, snorting on the in breath, thinking he was such a card. He wasn’t laughing. He loved it. (I, meanwhile, ordered the barcelona tart: chocolate, almond, and sea salt. Delicious.) Lemon person. Chocolate person.
Anyway, these lemon cup custards are just the thing for my husband. But what about the cook? Moi? I had a little bit of chocolate frosting left over from last week’s chocolate armagnac cake (I’m not a pack rat, far from it, but I don’t let chocolate ganache go to waste under any circumstances), and voila, a perfect marriage was born. Creamy vanilla custard, dreamy chocolate drizzled on top. Works for me!
These custards were ridiculously easy to make. I pulled the sauce together while my kids ate veggie sticks in the kitchen, then popped it in the water bath for 40 minutes. It’s a humble little dessert, just as custard is meant to be. Check out the recipe at The Way the Cookie Crumbles.
my famous recipe 