Featured Recipe - Easy Crème Brûlée
French for "scorched cream," this dessert recipe dates back over one hundred years. It is simple, yet rich and tasty, and preparation steps are easy. However, the recipe can and should be made ahead of time. Preparation time for this recipe is 3+ hours, mostly from the standpoint of cooking and cooling. Actual cook time is 30 minutes to 1 hour. It serves 6 people.
Ingredients:
Use custard cups or ramekins as the mold.
Directions:
French for "scorched cream," this dessert recipe dates back over one hundred years. It is simple, yet rich and tasty, and preparation steps are easy. However, the recipe can and should be made ahead of time. Preparation time for this recipe is 3+ hours, mostly from the standpoint of cooking and cooling. Actual cook time is 30 minutes to 1 hour. It serves 6 people.
Ingredients:
- 4 eggs
- vanilla
- sugar
- heavy cream
- salt
Use custard cups or ramekins as the mold.
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 350 F.
- Separate the 4 eggs. Put the yolks into the small bowl. Set aside for a minute to come to room temperature.
- Put 4 tablespoons of sugar into the mixing bowl.
- Add 1 pint of heavy cream.
- Stir gently with a whisk. Do not whip, just stir.
- Put the mixture into the microwave for 2 minutes to dissolve the sugar.
- Whisk the yolks a bit, just enough to break the yolks and smooth them out.
- When the sugar and cream mixture has melted the sugar in the microwave, stir it a bit to make sure the sugar has fully dissolved. Slowly stir in the eggs and whisk the mixture well. Add a dash of salt and a teaspoon of vanilla.
- After the mixture is well whisked, pour it into ramekins. Put the ramekins into a roasting pan.
- Put the roasting pan with ramekins into the oven. Without splashing, gently pour enough hot water into the roasting pan to come up halfway on the outside of the ramekins. The water does not need to be boiling, just hot.
- Bake at 350F for 40 minutes. The custard in the ramekins should still be jiggly at this stage, not fully solid, and as the ramekins cool, the custard will set to the consistency of cheesecake.
- Before putting them in the refrigerator, allow the ramekins to reach room temperature. Chill them overnight (however, they are certainly edible after a few hours of chilling if you cannot wait for the next day).
- Topping - Sprinkle some plain sugar on the top of each ramekin (other options include brown sugar or vanilla sugar). Just before serving, use either a butane torch (the small cooking torch is best) or use the broiler on your oven to "burn" the sugar to melting stage when it turns a bit brown. Watch this closely if you put the ramekins under the oven broiler because the burning process moves quickly within seconds once the temperature reaches the burn stage.
- At this stage, you have crème brûlée. Let the dessert cool before eating.