Crème brûlée

Name: Crème brûlée
Prep time: 35 min
Total time: 5 h 20 min

June 23, 2010

Prep 35 min Total 5 hr 20 min

Creme Brulee - Close Up © kvalifood.com

Video Recipe - Crème Brûlée is *the* classic French dessert. It is an edible toy for adults. A crispy caramel top. A creamy blubbery filling. It is simple to make. Uses few ingredients, and it’s always a bit of a primal show-off doing the final work with the gas burner at the table.

Ingredients

Serves 8-10

5 dl heavy whipping cream, about 38%
2 dl whole milk (can be omitted)
1 vanilla pod (only grains)
150 g sugar
3 eggs (or 8 egg yolks)

Directions

Mix everything except the eggs. Bring to a simmer.

There are three reasons for it to simmer. It melts the sugar. It draws out the flavor of the vanilla. It also makes it easier to stir out the eggs evenly.

Stir well so it does not burn.

Let the mixture cool down to a little below finger warm. The mixture must be just below 50°C (122°F) so the eggs don’t harden or form lumps. They do this by approximately 55°C (131°F). Fingers are 37°C (99°F) so that will certainly be cool enough.

Mix in the eggs

Mix the eggs well into the cream mixture. If all free-floating remnants of egg white or yolk, you will be eating a dessert with hard-boiled egg scattered in :-(

Put about 1 dl (½ cup) in each of the small molds. I tend to use an 8 cm (3 inch) ramakin.

Put them in a water bath in the oven for 30 minutes at 150°C (300°F) (convection)

The cream should still be a little “blubbery” in the middle when you take it out of the oven. Otherwise they gotten too much, and you have made a very sweet “baked egg” ;-)

Cover with film, so they don’t end up tasting of refrigerator, and place in the fridge until you are ready to serve. You can certainly make it the day before. But it must cool for at least 4 hours.

The cream must be completely stiff and cold before you can continue.

Cover the top with about 2 teaspoons of sugar and burn it gently with a gas torch until it caramelizes.

They should be served when the caramel has solidified on the top, but the cream should still be cold and stiff underneath. So don’t linger with the gas burner. It is a very good idea to use an actual a gas torch especially for this use, it is hot enough to caramelize the sugar quickly enough that it does not heat the cream.

Notes

There are many recipes using only the egg yolks. Firstly, it is a waste of food if you throw the whites out. Secondly, they taste too much of eggs for my taste. That is why I have made this recipe so I can use whole eggs.

The rule of thumb is that for a cream-based cream to use 1 egg 2½ dl (1 cup) liquid for it to become a cream. You can switch out 1 whole egg with 2½ yolk to do it only with yolks.