Pot O' Gold

They say that Leprechauns hide their pots of gold at the end of the rainbow and if you can find where the rainbow touches down you get to keep the pot of gold. Well, rainbows can be pretty tricky because they can move faster than any human can chase them.

But here's a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow that you're sure to catch! It's a baked egg custard with a sweet caramel sauce on the bottom.

You'll need:

Your favorite sugar cookie recipe
A little flour
One egg white
Colored sugar sprinkles - red, yellow, green, blue
1/4 cup of sugar
3 cups of whole milk
4 eggs - beaten
Another 1/4 cup of sugar

Equipment:

Measuring cups and spoons
A large round cookie or biscuit cutter - or a large glass
Aluminum foil
A pastry brush or new paint brush
A cookie sheet
2 sauce pans
A whisk
A ladle
Ovenproof custard cups
A large deep baking pan like a lasagna pan
A LOT of adult help.

Dust the counter with a little flour
Roll the cookie dough out about 1/4 inch thick.
Cut the cookie dough into rounds about 3-4 inches across. We didn't have a large cookie cutter so we used a glass with a thin rim. It worked just as well. Here's a tip: dip the cookie cutter or the edge of the glass in flour first so the cookie dough won't stick.
Now cut the cookie dough round in half. Now you have two half-rounds that will become your rainbow.
Make yourself an aluminum foil half-round about the size of the cookie.
Place the foil half round over the top of one of the cookie shapes. Move it down so you can now see about a 1/4 inch of cookie dough showing at the top.
Brush a little egg white onto the cookie dough.
Sprinkle the red sprinkles over the egg white. The egg white will act like glue.
Repeat this process but this time sprinkle the yellow sugar.
Do it again and use the green, then the blue.
Put the cookies on the cookie sheet and bake according to directions.
When the cookies are baked set them aside to cool.
Set the oven to 325 degrees so it will be ready for the custard.
Now begin the custard by putting the first 1/4 cup of sugar into the bottom of one of the sauce pans.
Turn up the heat below it. It will take a while but eventually the sugar will begin to melt. As it starts to turn brown, use your spoon to move it around so that all the white sugar melts and becomes brown.
Here's where adult help is absolutely necessary! Have your step-mom or whoever is helping you pour a little bit of this caramel sauce into the bottom of each of the custard cups.
Next, put the milk into the second sauce pan and heat it until it almost boils. You will see a skin begin to form on the milk. This is what is known as scalding the milk.
The next step is "tempering the eggs." This means that you're going to raise the temperature of the eggs gradually by adding the hot milk a little at a time so the eggs won't cook into hard strings. If the eggs are just poured right in you won't get custard. You'll get a mess! This is a four-handed job. It works best if you ladle the hot milk in while your adult helper whisks the eggs. About 4 ladles full of milk should be enough to warm the eggs up.
Now add the egg mixture to the milk.
Cook the mixture, whisking it now and again. It should start to thicken in about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, wash and dry the ladle. Place the custard cups with the caramel into the backing pan.
When the custard is ready, ladle it into the custard cups.
Put hot tap water in the bottom of the the casserole pan, surrounding the custard cups. We put the water in first and then moved it to the oven. It might be much easier to put it in the oven first then pour the water in. Either way this is definitely something only your adult helper should try to do.
Bake the custard at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes or until custard is firm around the edges and.

When the custard cups come out of the oven, let them sit for a few minutes to cool. Put a rainbow cookie over the edge and serve your Pot O'Gold. While eating dip your spoon down to the bottom to bring up the caramel sauce.

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