Preheat the oven to 150°C.

Measure out 50g of the sugar and place it in a heavy-based saucepan. The recipe then says to moisten with water, but my syrup turned into toffee, so pour in enough water to cover the sugar.

Put the pan over a medium heat and stir until the sugar has dissolved. Bring to the boil and cook rapidly until it colors to a light caramel.

At this point the recipe says to remove the pan from the heat and add a tablespoon of water, and to swirl the pan to mix the water and caramel together. I found that this separated the syrup into chunks. I would recommend you pour the syrup mixture straight off the heat into the ramekins before the syrup has a chance to cool too much.

Crush the cardamom pods and put them in a clean saucepan with the milk. Bring to the boil then remove from the heat and allow it to cool a little.

Carefully sieve the cardamom away from the milk.

Combine the eggs and remaining caster sugar in a large bowl and mix well. Whisk the milk into the egg mixture to make a custard. Make sure the milk isn't still too hot at this point or you'll get scrambled eggs!

Pour the custard into the moulds over the syrup, almost filling them. Put the moulds in a baking tray and half-fill the tray with water.

Put the tray of custards in the oven to poach for 30-40 minutes, or until set. Do not let the water in the tray come to the boil.

Remove the custards from the oven. Be extremely careful not to let water spill into the set custards like I did with my last one! Allow to cool.

When ready to serve, run a pointed knife around the inside of each mould, turn over on to a plate and carefully shake the custard out.