We had a nice and busy multicultural festival in DERI this week. We’re over 130 people from about 30 countries, so there was a lot of interesting things to find out and a lot of yummy (and interesting) food to try.

Our stand (Romania) was very busy and my contribution was quite modest – this desert and mamaliga (polenta).

The literal translation of the name of the desert is “cream of burned sugar”. It is something like creme caramel or creme brulee, but not exactly the same. This is my mom’s recipe, which I absolutely love, and it’s also easy enough to make (the proof of that is the fact I was able to make it successfully 🙂 ).

Ingredients:

• 3-5 eggs depending on how many people you want to feed. I made it from 5 eggs and managed to split it in more than 20 tiny tiny taster portions.
• about 10 table spoons of sugar, depending on the number of eggs and the size of the pot.
• 600ml to 1l milk, also depending on the number of eggs used
• max 1 table spoon of flour
• vanilla (either essence, stick or sugar)

Preparation:

1. Melt 4 table spoons of sugar in a pot (about 10cm deep) and cover the inside of the pot with the “burned sugar”. Leave to cool down.
2. Separate the yolks from the whites
3. Mix the yolks with 1 table spoon of sugar per egg (3 eggs -> 3 spoons of sugar, 4 eggs -> 4 spoons of sugar, …). Mix until the eggs become white-ish.
   Add vanilla (essence, stick, sugar.. whatever you prefer).
   Add 1 teaspoon / half table spoon of flour.
   Add warm milk (just warm, if it’s too hot the mix becomes scrambled eggs!) Use 200ml of milk per egg.
   Mix them well and set aside.
4. Beat the egg whites into a firm foam.
5. Mix in the result of step 3.
   Mix well enough to break any big clumps of egg white foam (they rise up and get burned too much otherwise).
6. Pour the mix in the pot covered with sugar and put in the oven for 30 – 35 minutes.
7. Serve cold (if you have the patience to let it cool down).