To celebrate the season premiere of one of our favorite shows - Futurama - Chip and I decided to make a show themed feast! I knew that I had to make something with honey;
The Sting is one of my favorite episodes and it heavily features the (not-so) ordinary honey the Planet Express crew gathers from deadly, deadly space bees. From Bender's buzzing buttocks to Leela's slow descent into madness, this episode demonstrates the wonderful weirdness that is Futurama - part ridiculous absurdity and part sweetness.
I decided that we needed a dessert we could eat by the spoonful; something to mimic eating honey straight from the jar, just like they do in the show. Since the day was so hot, I settled on making a creamy, cool custard with some Earl Grey shortbread cookies on the side. To make the custard I slightly modified a basic
baked custard recipe from the excellent blog
Baking Bites; I'll post my version below. For the cookies I followed Martha Stewart's
recipe to the letter.
The custard was out of this world, and a perfect light ending to a heavy fried meal. The honey flavor shone through without the cloying sweetness that honey based desserts sometimes have, and the vanilla bean just made everything that much better. As for the cookies - I'd call them a mixed success. The flavor of the tea and the orange peels added complexity to an otherwise simple dish, but their texture left something to be desired because I didn't grind the leaves down to a fine enough powder. Live and learn - next time (and oh, will there be a next time!) I think they'll rock.
