The Lumpy Eiervla Disaster

I was really eager to try out the Eiervla recipe. A vla/pudding without starch sounded really good; I'm a big fan of crème brulée and this recipe seemed to go in the same direction, without the burnt sugar coat but with some lemon in the mix. Can't be bad!

All the ingredients are ready.

Beating the eggs with the sugar. I did use regular sugar, not powdered one. After a while I obtained a creamy mix ("ruban").

Grated lemon peel, yum yum.


Mixed with milk and cream. Quite foamy (I used my electric beater) and the batter is yummy (although a bit on the sweet side).

Au Bain Marie. This phase took me approx. 15 minutes, the recipe told me to keep stirring, which I did. Yawn...

And then something goes All Wrong and the Stuff goes All Lumpy.

Fluids and solids are separating. We are witnessing an interesting, but unwanted chemical reaction here.
The Stuff also tastes less good now. In fact, it's not very attractive and instead, it's very sweet and the lemon taste is too overpowering.

Boo. Bah.

Is it the recipe? Is it my fault? Let's do some research.
(I know that doing research *before* acting is often the wise thing to do... let's blame my eagerness ;-)
My Belgian cookbook, "Ons Kookboek", has several similar recipes for "flan" and one for crème brulée; they have similar ingredients (but often only cream and eggs, no milk) and all say that the substance needs to be cooked "au bain marie", but in the oven and very slowly (pour the mix in small dishes, put these in a larger dish with water and let this stiffen slowly in the oven).
If the temperature is too high, the flan will become lumpy. That's what happened to me.

Lesson learned!

Sooo... now I'm really eager to try it again!! Not with these ingredients though, just a nice vanilla flan or a crème brulée. As I've run out of eggs, this will have to be something for after the market event though...