Alana
A while ago I made creme brulee for a French themed food night with the nurses. I wanted to give this recipe another go because, as I mentioned in my previous post, the creme brulee didn’t set properly.
Earlier this week Theresa and I made a batch of swiss meringue buttercream because we plan on doing another wedding cake practice-run this Friday. Swiss meringue is wonderful, but it requires a ton of egg whites. Luckily creme brulee only requires yolks 🙂
I used the same recipe as my first post because the flavour was “really good” (Theresa, 2014). I wanted to put a twist on it, but I figured I should get the basics down pat before playing around too much. Sigh, I did find a couple recipes for Irish Cream Creme Brulee that sounded amazing, too. Perhaps next time.
I definitely think this batch of creme brulee turned out better than the last time 🙂 I’m pretty sure that the first time I made this recipe, I underestimated how done the custard was when I checked it in the oven. Remember, jello doesn’t jiggle THAT much! To fix it, all I had to do was let the custard cook longer. Easy peasy.
Torch in action! You can see it’s flame ever so faintly!
Oddly enough, the part I had trouble with this time around was the “brulee”. For some reason my torch just did not want to fill with gas! It was okay at first, but I found that as I went I found that I needed to fill the gas more and more frequently. This got frustrating, so by the time I had two left I gave up and broiled the tops in the oven. In retrospect, this was probably also a safer choice because I may or may not have made a slight fire ball in my kitchen when some of the butane leaked and I lit my torch… Oops?
So much torch love-hate right now.
As I said, this is the same recipe from my previous post, though I have made a couple comments on it this time around.
Crème Brûlée
[The accented letters don’t show up 😦 ]
Adapted from COOKALOT’s recipe and comments from CHEFPEON on allrecipes.com
Ingredients
- 6 egg yolks
- 4 tbsp granulated sugar, plus extra for the crust
- ½ tsp vanilla
- 2 ½ cups whipping cream
Directions
- Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (150 degrees C), arrange 6 ramekins in a pan (ex. a 9×5), and put a kettle onto boil (basically just heat water to put in the pan with the ramekins).
- Beat egg yolks, 4 tablespoons sugar and vanilla in a mixing bowl until thick and creamy.
- Pour cream into a saucepan and stir over low heat until it almost comes to boil (I did this until there was steam coming off the cream); immediately remove the cream from heat. Slowly pour cream into the egg yolk mixture while mixing. Beat until combined, and scrape off the foam*.
- Pour mixture into ramekins, and fill the dish with hot water until it reaches approximately half-way up the ramekins.
- Bake in preheated oven for 15-30 minutes (definitely closer to the 30 for me). When the middle of the custard jiggles slightly when you tap the pan (like jello), remove from oven.
- Cool in the water bath for 15 minutes. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or overnight.
- Remove from the fridge 30 minutes before serving. 5 minutes before serving sprinkle extra sugar on top of the custard, evening it out**, with the back of a spoon if needed. Use a baking torch to heat the sugar until it caramelizes, taking care not to let the flame linger in one spot over the custard. If you don’t have a torch, you can set your oven to broil and put the ramekins in for a couple minutes. Just make sure you keep a watchful eye on them!
- Let the sugar on top cool for a minute or two so it can harden. Serve and enjoy 🙂
* I think you could but the mixture into one of those gravy separators and just pour it into the ramekins with that, It would stop all the foam from going on top.
** Definitely make sure the sugar is even, or else it will not brown evenly.
Chateau Gateau 