Crème Brûlée
As I stated on Week 8, we were eventually going to make a crème brûlée and this was the week! Crème brûlée is virtually as ubiquitous as cheesecake when it comes to restaurant desserts, yet, I have never eaten one. Of course, for the same reason I have never ordered a crème caramel or flan. This is our year to not only make things we’ve never made before but also to eat things we’ve never eaten before.
I don’t know about you, but crème brûlée has a reputation of being pretentious. It’s always on the menu of the finer restaurants I’ve been to and I envision having to arrogantly order it with my nose in the air. Of course, my opinion is influenced by the movies and TV where this is concerned. No judgement if you regularly order it! Surprisingly, the dessert isn’t pretentious at all. It’s just a glorified custard. Making it isn’t difficult either.
Crème brûlée is French for burnt cream. It consists of a baked custard topped with caramelized sugar. People who love it find the crunchy caramelized sugar a delicious contrast to the smooth and creamy custard below. Cracking the crunchy top before eating is an event of sorts. This dessert is very similar to the crème caramel but there are a few differences that I will discuss below.
For this version, we used the Cooks Illustrated Baking cookbook again. Our substitutions were to replace half the cream with almond milk (we knew it wouldn’t be as creamy but were OK with that), the sugar for the custard was replaced with half Allulose and half Splenda. We also used vanilla extract instead of steeping an actual vanilla bean in the cream. Finally, we used regular granulated sugar for the top rather than the specialty versions listed in the recipe. We followed the rest of the recipe as written other than halving it. I didn’t want to end up eating an entire batch again if the rest of the family didn’t like them. (Not something we can easily take to the neighbors either.)
Ingredients
- 4 cups heavy cream, chilled
- ⅔ cup granulated sugar
- pinch table salt
- 1 vanilla bean, halved lengthwise
- 12 large egg yolks
- 8 – 12 teaspoons turbinado sugar or Demerara sugar
Method
Before You Begin: Separate the eggs and whisk the yolks after the cream has finished steeping; if left to sit, the surface of the yolks will dry and form a film. A vanilla bean gives custard the deepest flavor, but 2 teaspoons of extract, whisked into the yolks in step 4, can be used instead. The best way to judge doneness is with a digital instant-read thermometer. The custards, especially if baked in shallow fluted dishes, will not be deep enough to provide an accurate reading with a dial-face thermometer. For the caramelized sugar crust, we recommend turbinado or Demerara sugar. Regular granulated sugar will work, too, but use only 1 scant teaspoon on each ramekin or 1 teaspoon on each shallow fluted dish.
- Adjust oven rack to lower-middle position and heat oven to 300 degrees.
- Combine 2 cups cream, sugar, and salt in medium saucepan; with paring knife, scrape seeds from vanilla bean into pan, submerge pod in cream, and bring mixture to boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally to ensure that sugar dissolves. Take pan off heat and let steep 15 minutes to infuse flavors.
- Meanwhile, place kitchen towel in bottom of large baking dish or roasting pan and arrange eight 4- to 5-ounce ramekins (or shallow fluted dishes) on towel. Bring kettle or large saucepan of water to boil over high heat.
- After cream has steeped, stir in remaining 2 cups cream to cool down mixture. Whisk yolks in large bowl until broken up and combined. Whisk about 1 cup cream mixture into yolks until loosened and combined; repeat with another 1 cup cream. Add remaining cream and whisk until evenly colored and thoroughly combined. Strain through fine-mesh strainer into 2-quart measuring cup or pitcher (or clean medium bowl); discard solids in strainer. Pour or ladle mixture into ramekins, dividing it evenly among them.
- Carefully place baking dish with ramekins on oven rack; pour boiling water into dish, taking care not to splash water into ramekins, until water reaches two-thirds height of ramekins. Bake until centers of custards are just barely set and are no longer sloshy and digital instant-read thermometer inserted in centers registers 170 to 175 degrees, 30 to 35 minutes (25 to 30 minutes for shallow fluted dishes). Begin checking temperature about 5 minutes before recommended time.
- Transfer ramekins to wire rack; cool to room temperature, about 2 hours. Set ramekins on rimmed baking sheet, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until cold, at least 4 hours or up to 4 days.
Our Experience
when we assembled our ingredients, we commented on how short the list would have been if we hadn’t made any substitutions.
The cream was supposed to be steeped with the vanilla bean but without that, it is just warmed up for the tempering. We stirred it frequently because we didn’t want it to scald.
With the bread pudding and now the creme brulee, we have a lot of egg whites in the freezer. I thought about making meringues or macarons…but, we’re saving those for another weekend! The recipe suggested waiting to separate the eggs and mixing the yolks so no film would form on them.
We slowly added the cream/milk to the eggs and whisked continually as we poured it in. It looks good and we don’t see any scrambled eggs.
The straining was a good step to include since the cream/milk formed a film as they cooled. If we had scrambled a little of the eggs the strainer would have caught that too.
This is our second recipe requiring a water bath so we felt like pros. 😉 Maybe too confident! We heated the water in the microwave while we were doing everything else. It’s just easier…and it steams your microwave so it’s really easy to clean too! The towel or paper towel in the bottom is probably standard but it’s pure genius as far as I am concerned.
paper towel in the bottom helped to keep the ramekins from sliding around.
I was probably over confident when pouring the water into the pan because I splashed some water into one of the ramekins. I remember watching The Great British Baking Show when they were making custards and getting water in them always caused problems. I fully expected that it wouldn’t set or something would be wrong with it. Luckily, we didn’t notice anything different about the tainted one vs the others. We tested the custard with the knife as suggested in the recipe and also with a thermometer just to be safe (170 degrees).
left. I decided that would be the one that I tested for doneness. I was hoping that it didn’t prevent the custard from setting up; it didn’t.
Since the tops were going to have the brûlée, I wasn’t overly disappointed with the cracked and bubbly tops. Another great aspect of this dessert…it’s very forgiving and looks great even if it isn’t pristine right out of the oven.
I wasn’t too worried about them since the brulee was going to hide any imperfections.
In order to do the brûlée, most recipes recommended a torch. Some stated that chilling the ramekins and then putting them in the oven to caramelize the sugar could cause the ramekins to break. Others mentioned that the oven would be inconsistent and once the browning started it would go very quickly and burn if you weren’t watching it. I opted for the torch; I’ve always wanted one so this just gave me an excuse to buy one. It was $20 well spent.
The torch probably wasn’t as industrial as the ones I’ve seen on all the cooking shows, but it worked for me. I thought it might go faster but it was fun regardless.
Most of the custards got really dark spots that I figured were spots where the custard bubbled up and kind of burned. So, for my last one, I didn’t try to get the sugar as dark. It probably isn’t as dark as you would get in a restaurant, but it was hard and caramelized and that was the important part.
but it was caramelized so we stopped before the custard got burned and we had the ugly spots again.
What we liked.
Unlike the crème caramel, this dessert received 5 out of 5 even if a couple of the “yes” votes weren’t very enthusiastic. Since its texture was more like pudding than Jello (crème caramel), everyone agreed it was better than the crème caramel.
Personally, I was not looking forward to “crunchy sugar”. I hate sugar coated desserts because I feel like I’m eating sand. I’m just not a fan of crunching things that should be soft and chewy or creamy. So, I was surprised that I really enjoyed the caramelized sugar on top. Since it was caramelized, it tasted more like brittle than plain sugar. It’s really very good by itself but that crunchy caramel on top is what makes it. I totally get it now! If we hadn’t substituted almond milk for half of the cream, I think this dessert would be sinfully decadent even if it’s just a custard. I can’t imagine how rich and creamy it would have been since it was pretty darn rich and creamy with half the cream!
If you like to entertain, I think this dessert would be a great option for a sit down dinner. It’s easy, you can make it ahead of time, and it looks fancy.
What we would change.
We were trying to think of what we would change and we really had no obvious changes. Some of the recipes mentioned that they should be made in wide, shallow ramekins in order to create more surface area for the caramel top. That would be good but we didn’t think we were missing out by making them in our regular 6 oz. ramekins. Since it is a very simple recipe with simple flavors, this is another recipe that could accept other flavors pretty easily.
What we learned.
Obviously, we learned how to caramelize sugar using a torch. Yay! This was our second water bath but we were reminded to be careful pouring the water into the pan. Another note, you can make them ahead of time and then caramelize the sugar right before you want to serve them (another plus for a dessert for company). We thought they would all be eaten at the same time but some family members weren’t interested in eating the whole thing. Just remember that the sugar will liquify if you caramelize the sugar too early (like if you let them sit overnight). Don’t get me wrong, the custard was tasty but without the crunchy top, it’s just another pudding (with a lot of calories).
Until next week, Happy Baking!