What happened to my apple and custard - it was like scrambled egg

[blueskythinker]

I tried to make a dessert last night with cooking apples and in baked custard. Except the custard turned out like scrambled egg.

The recipe for the custard was:
flour
sugar
eggs
milk

I needed to heat it on the hob until it thickened, let it cool, then pour it onto apple wedges and bake in the oven for 25 minutes.

Has anyone any idea of what I could have done wrong?

I think you may have cooked the custard too quickly and scrambled the egg.
The secret of real egg custard is slow slow gentle heat and constant gentle stirring

what quantities of flour, sugar, eggs and milk did you use?

Where you following a recipe?

Have you followed the recipe is the past succesfully?

As well as cooking really slowly on a low heat you also need to be whisking the whole time, or the bottom cooks and goes lumpy before the top

My mum always makes custard using a large pan filled a third high with hot water from the kettle and balances a metal bowl over it (like old fashioned melting choc method before we all got microwaves). Helps cook it more gently and less likely to burn the bottom/scramble the egg

I suspect you heated it too quickly. Just looking in my Techniques Bible(!): Heating custard quickly makes the protein in the eggs denature very quickly at a certain temp, before forming scrambled egg. If you see it start to happen, whip it off the hob quickly, and pass it through a sieve. I think the trick is to heat it over a very low heat and stir a lot - takes more patience than I have, sometimes...

It was a recipe I have never tried before (in fact I have never tried to make custard before)

It was Jenny Bristow's 'Taste the Good Life' sliced spiced apple cake.

Quantities were

50g flour
25g sugar
3 eggs
1/2 pint milk

I did lots of whisking, but it had maybe got too hot before that.

Sounds like it just heated up too quickly then!

Definately recommend using the bowl over a pan of boiling water next time, with constant whisking.

Custard can be tricky to make from scratch.