Creme Brulee

Creme Brulee is like heaven. It's my favorite dessert. The crackling of the sugar when you dip your spoon into it... the creaminess of unhealthy levels of cream, eggs, and sugar... mmmMMMMMmm. I hadn't made it in a long time, but I made champagne cupcakes for New Year's Eve, which required six egg whites, and I had six leftover egg yolks and creme brulee was the perfect dish to use them for. MmmMMMmmm. Just thinking about it makes me hungry. I finished off the last one yesterday.


Don't even know what creme brulee is? Well, it's easy to make, and soooogoood.




The first time I made it was with my friends Danielle and Elizabeth, when we were in high school. The language department of our school had a dessert contest, and we had to make a dessert that corresponded to the language we took. Danielle, Elizabeth, and I had been in French class with each other forever (and still couldn't speak a word of it), and we decided to make creme brulee. It kicked ass, was totally delicious, and we still lost the dessert competition. I'm still outraged.

Okay, Majestic Domestic. Get over your bad self.

Anyways, Step One is to preheat the oven to 325, get your ingredients, and your baking utensils. You'll need ramekins for this recipe.

I found some for about a dollar each at, surprisingly, the hardware store. I went there to get shelf liners and an exacto-knife for another craft project I'm working on, and wandered into the small cooking section. Much to my delight, I found a zillion cool cooking pans for about a third of what they cost elsewhere. Madeleine pans for $11? Yes, please.

Anyways, the original creme brulee recipe is from here. I halved it for this recipe, because my family members are all either diabetic or on a New Year's diet. Seriously, I have a perpetual urge to bake delicious and elaborate desserts, and absolutely no one to share them with. Please take them off my hands.

For the whole recipe, you'll need: 1 quart of heavy cream, six egg yolks, 1 cup of sugar, and a vanilla bean. How easy is this recipe?!

Here's the heavy cream and vanilla bean. What's a vanilla bean? It's where vanilla extract comes from. They're really good to use in recipes, but are really expensive. So, if you don't feel like spending a lot of money on one for one recipe, you can just substitute a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

Step Two: Pour the cream into a medium-sized saucepan. Now, it's time to cut the vanilla bean. Cut it in half lengthwise, and scrape the little seeds out into the cream. Then, put the pod into the cream too. Turn the heat up to medium-high.

Here are some of the seeds.

Step Three: While you're waiting for the cream and vanilla to boil, take your egg yolks and whisk them with a cup of sugar for about a minute or two. When the cream boils, take it off the stove and let it sit for fifteen to twenty minutes.

Boiling cream. The little black flecks you see are the vanilla bean seeds.

Step Four: Take the pod part of the vanilla bean out of the cream. You can do this by straining the cream into another bowl. Then, gradually add the cream to the egg mixture, while stirring continually.

Step Five: Pour the mixture into ramekins. Then, put the ramekins into a roasting pan. Pour hot water into the roasting pan, until the water reaches halfway up the ramekins.

Step Six: Bake for forty to forty-five minutes in the oven. Then, carefully take the roasting pan out of the oven. Now, you have to move your boiling hot ramekins to the fridge. Don't even get me started on this wonderful task. (Does sarcasm come across online? I sure hope so.)

I first tried to do it with my bare hand, and burned my fingertips. I then put a baking glove on, which worked for about a half a second, until the ramekin slipped and THIS happened:

Charming. The ramekin on the bottom slipped and dropped creme-brulee-side-down into the water. I was not very happy when this happened.

The best way to do it is to put a potholder on your palm, then using your opposite hand, quickly pick up the hot ramekin and put it on the hand with the potholder on it. Then, make a mad dash for the fridge before you drop the @#$%@&! ramekin again.

Let the ramekins sit in the fridge for at least two hours.

Step Seven: Now, the "brulee" part of creme brulee is the sugar on the top. You're supposed to use a kitchen torch, a really cool gadget that I don't own. Don't fret, however: You can caramelize the sugar using your oven's broiler. Move an oven rack so it's from four to six inches from the top of the oven. Turn the broiler on "high." Sprinkle about two tablespoons of granulated sugar on top of each creme brulee, until the top is uniformly covered. Put your ramekins on a baking sheet, and place under the broiler.

This part is kind of difficult. My advice is to prop the oven door open. You have to watch these suckers like a hawk, because the sugar will burn easily under the hot broiler. Also, the individual desserts sometime cook at different rates, so one may be almost burnt while the other is just starting to caramelize. The entire process takes from three to five minutes, so just make sure to watch it the whole time.

Take them out when the creme brulee looks like this. Droolingly-delicious.

Step Eight: Refrigerate for another thirty minutes or so, if you caramelized the sugar using the broiler method.

Step Nine: Get out a spoon. Gently crack the caramelized sugar with it. Devour.

OMG.

*Tip that I discovered when I finished my creme brulee: the vanilla bean seeds may sink to the bottom. To the uneducated observer, this may look kind of gross. So, if your guests will be averse to this, just use vanilla extract instead.