Sweet Corn Budino

A special dessert that says Summer!

Fell in love with this sweet corn budino ever since I first had it at Locanda Verde in Tribeca years ago. Although the budino is no longer on their menu, luckily, I found their recipe online and have been making it every Summer when sweet corn is in peak season.

Here’s the modified version of the original recipe where I reduced sugar, increased the quantities of sweet corn, heavy cream and vanilla bean, also added rum to the blueberry sauce to give it an extra kick!

Ingredients:

Budino

3 fresh corns, shucked

1.5 quarts heavy cream

¼ cup sugar

1 vanilla bean, split, and seeds scraped

2 large eggs

6 large egg yolks 

Baking dishes /ramekins (I used a 8” cake pan and 2 small ramekins)

Nonstick oil spray

Blueberry Sauce

4 cups blueberries, rinsed

¼ cup sugar, or more to taste

Juice of 1 lemon

1 tbsp rum

Instructions:

Budino

1.     Cut the kernels from corn cobs and reserve the cobs.

2.     Combine the kernels, cobs, heavy cream, sugar, salt, seeds and pod of vanilla bean in a large pot and bring to boil. Remove from the heat.

3.     Wait till the mixture turns cool, chill covered in the fridge for at least 12 hours and up to 2 days.

I prefer the flavor when using a whole vanilla bean, though the picture only shows half.

4.     When ready to bake, preheat the to 300°F /150°C. Coat baking dishes with nonstick oil spray.

5.     Whisk together the eggs and yolks in a bowl.

6.     Remove the corn cobs and vanilla pod from the chilled cream mixture. Pour the cream mixture to the egg mixture, whisk till liquid is smooth. Strain through a fine mesh sieve and reserve the kernels in a bowl.

7.     Fill baking dishes/ ramekins with cream mixture, place the dishes in a deep roasting pan, cover each dish with tin foil, leave an opening (one side loosely unsealed) to release steam). Pour warm water in the deep roasting pan till water runs half way up the ramekins.

8.     Bake for an hour or longer till the edges are set and centers are slightly jiggly when shaken.

9.     Remove the baking dishes from the oven and discard the foils. Let the custards cool down to room temperature in the water bath before removing from the water bath.

10.  When the custards are completely set, cover the dishes with plastic wrap and chill in fridge before serving, for up to 2 days.

Blueberry Sauce

1.     Combine 2 cups blueberries, rum, lemon juice, and sugar in a sauce pan, bring to simmer over medium high heat. Sir to release blueberry juice. Cook for 5 minutes.

2.     Bring the sauce to boil over high heat and cool for a few minutes to thicken the sauce.

3.     Remove from heat the stir in the remaining blueberries.

4.     Transfer to a clean bowl and let cool before chill in the fridge.

Serve the sweet corn budino with blueberry sauce and reserved corn~ Yum!