Custard has always been English custard to me.

My mother was British, and custard was simply part of growing up. In England, custard belongs to that wonderful tradition of everyday puddings and desserts—a warm, pourable sauce served over cakes, crumbles, fruit and all manner of things that become just a little more comforting once custard is poured over them.

And, of course, there was Bird’s Custard.

We always had boxes of it in my mother’s pantry. Bird’s Custard Powder has been part of British kitchens for generations, and my mother used it too, although I remember her making her custard from scratch and adding some Bird’s to it. Whatever her exact method was, I remember what mattered to me: waiting for it to be finished so I could have some while it was still warm.

I didn’t need cake underneath it. I didn’t need fruit. I was perfectly happy with a bowl of custard and a spoon.

But custard was also an important part of one of my mother’s most famous desserts—her English trifle.

Her trifle was legendary in our world. People asked her to make it for gatherings and special occasions, even though it was a lot of work, because everyone knew how good it would be. There were layers upon layers, but to me the custard was always the star. I would beg her to make extra so that some could escape the trifle and find its way into a bowl for me.

There is a photograph on my refrigerator of my mother holding one of her trifles.

I see it all the time, but while developing this recipe I began to understand differently what that photograph holds for me. It isn’t merely a photograph of my mother with something she made. There is an entire piece of my childhood inside it.

And somehow, while sitting down to gather all of my development notes for this recipe, a simple bowl of custard sent me thinking about how much of our lives can be carried through food.

My mother was British. My father was Puerto Rican, and his parents came from Spain. Growing up, I was surrounded by traditions from cultures that were quite different from one another, and as a child I don’t think I understood what a gift that was. They were simply our family traditions. Now I appreciate them more than ever.

Later, travel added still more layers. I have eaten wonderful food throughout Japan, Canada, Mexico and across the United States, first finding my way through those experiences as a vegetarian and eventually as a vegan. There are meals I remember because of what was on the plate, but there are many more I remember because of where I was, who was sitting beside me, and what was happening in my life when we ate them.

That may be one of the most beautiful things food does.

We think we are making dinner for our children, baking a cake for someone’s birthday or putting a dessert on the table for a holiday. We may not realize that we are also making memories that someone could carry for the rest of their life.

A simple custard is never simply custard.

For me, it is a bowl of creamy, silky goodness filled with stories. It is my mother at the stove. It is the box of Bird’s in the pantry. It is asking whether there was any custard left that didn’t have to go into the trifle. And it is that photograph on my refrigerator.

Perhaps that is why I was unwilling to settle when I began developing a plant-based version.

I didn’t want vanilla pudding. I didn’t want something thick enough to stand on a spoon. And I didn’t want a coconut custard that tasted of coconut simply because coconut milk is an easy way to create richness without dairy. I wanted English custard—or at least the English custard that lives in my memory.

There are countless versions of custard, of course. Across Europe and beyond, custards move from thin pouring sauces to thick pastry creams, baked custards and set desserts. Even within Britain, families have their own preferences and traditions. But the English pouring custard I was chasing has a particular character: creamy and silky, softly sweet, unmistakably pourable, with vanilla present but never so dominant that it becomes vanilla pudding.

There is also a particular milky richness that I remember. Strangely enough, although I never liked drinking milk as a child, I loved evaporated milk, and traditional custard always reminded me a little of that flavor. It is difficult to describe—something rounded and deeply creamy that you cannot quite identify, but that tastes undeniably like custard.

That was the elusive part.

Eventually I found it through a combination of fresh cashew milk, a smaller amount of cultured cashew milk and my Sol Canyon Kitchen Cultured Butter. The fresh cashew milk brought body and richness. The cultured milk added a quiet depth beneath it—not enough to taste sour, but enough to give the custard that difficult-to-name dairy-like complexity I had been missing. The cultured butter completed it. And by keeping the vanilla restrained rather than making it the dominant flavor, suddenly I wasn’t tasting vanilla pudding anymore.

I was tasting custard.

That was my 10/10.

And now that I have it, I want this to become one of the foundational recipes of Sol Canyon Kitchen because a really good pouring custard can go almost anywhere. Eat it warm from a bowl, which remains one of my favorite ways. Pour it generously over a crumble or cobbler. Drizzle it over cake—or better yet, over one of those special cakes that seems to call for a pool of custard beneath it. Layer it with fruit. Spoon it into a trifle. Tuck it into a bun or pastry. Fill a doughnut with it. Or stand at the counter with a spoon and decide that perhaps the custard itself was dessert all along.

And someday, I want to make my mother’s trifle again.

I haven’t yet attempted to reproduce it entirely plant-based because it will be a project. Every part will need attention, right down to making things such as the ladyfingers from scratch. I have always known I would do it eventually.

Maybe this is the year.

Because now I finally have the custard.

And when I make that trifle and put all of those layers together, I know I will think about the photograph on my refrigerator. I will think about my mother carrying her trifle into another gathering where everyone had been waiting for it. And somewhere inside all those new plant-based layers will be something very old and very familiar.

A memory carried forward.

Yes, this English Custard belongs in Small Beautiful Things.

Although for me, making it again is not a small celebration at all.