Caramel custard

Traditional dessert, sometimes known as Caramel Creme. It took several goes to get this working!

Ingredients
2 tablespoons of sugar to make the caramel
(per person)
milk
1 tablespoon of sugar for the custard
1 egg
vanilla essence

Equipment
greaseproof paper
measuring jug
seive (optional)
small casseroles (ramekins) or larger bowl
baking tray

oven:
time in oven: 50 mins

preparation time:
mix together

Cooking process

The problem that I have found with caramel custard is that the caramel sticks to the bottom and won't turn out when you come to eat it. The caramel is supposed to dissolve into the custard while cooking, and sometimes it doesn't. I think I have found a way to stop this happening.
Make the caramel, by putting the sugar into a small pan, with a little water. Stir until dissolved, but then leave alone until water boils off, and it starts turning brown. Give one swirl (to mix the browness). Pour onto greaseproof paper and leave to cool. (This doesn't take long - a spell in the fridge will help.).
Peel the caramel off the paper, and break into as small pieces as you can manage. You could break it up further in a pestle and mortar, if you want, or blitz it in a food processor. The smaller the pieces, the more confidence you have that the caramel will dissolve. Put these pieces in the bottom of the ramekin/s or larger bowl.
Measure the milk, and add the sugar, stirring to dissove it.
Put the egg/s through a seive to add to the milk. The seive removes the gloopy bits, but it's also good for mixing the egg! If you don't want to use a seive, then make sure that the egg is beaten a bit before adding to the milk.
Pour into the ramekin/s or larger bowl, on top of the caramel. Give the whole mixture one stir, to make sure that the caramel is mixed in a little (or it will stay on the bottom and not dissolve).
Put the ramekin/s or bowl on a baking tray and into the oven to cook until set. I found this could take 50 mins.
Leaving it in the fridge to cool. Turn it out so the caramel coloured custard is on top.

Other comments

Tradionally, the molten caramel is poured into the bowl, and allowed to set hard. That seemed to lead to the "not dissolving" problem. That is why I break up the caramel into powder (if possible) before using it.
The other problem is the cooking. The recipes tend to say that you should use hot milk to make the custard. That needs care to make sure the milk is not too hot, or you end up with weird scrambled egg! They also suggest pouring boiling water into the baking tray round the ramekins, then using a cooler oven to do the cooking. But they gave times like 20 mins to cook, which just didn't happen! The time and oven temperature above seemed to work for me (but ovens differ) even without the hot milk and boiling water. It did mean that the custard was cooked more round the edges, and less in the middle. Perhaps the edges were slightly over-cooked. By all means try the hot milk / boiling water - perhaps it would cook the custard more evenly, or take less time.
It was also suggested that you butter the insides of the ramekins before puttting the custard mix in, to prevent sticking. I have consistently managed to forget to do this! With straight edged ramekins, there was no problem sliding a thin knife round the edge to loosen the custard, and there was no problem with the bottom (once I'd worked out my caramel trick).