I mentioned to my mother that I wanted to try making crème Brûlée and she (rightly) reminded me that we did not have anything to Brûlée the top with. I took this as a challenge that it was likely not meant to be, and we now have a mini food safe torch.
The recipe I used was Easy Vanilla Creme Brûlée from Veronika’s Kitchen, specifically because we do not have any vanilla bean in our house and this was the first recipe I found that used vanilla extract instead of vanilla bean for flavoring the cream. This recipe is as simple as it sounds – warm the cream, beat the egg yolks with sugar until pale, then slowly beat in the warm cream to the eggs so that they warm gradually. After that I ladled the custard into ramekins set in a baking dish filled with boiling water, baked for about 45 minutes in the oven until the custard was mostly set, then let it cool until it could safely be put into the refrigerator.
The next day we finished it off – lightly topped with sugar and freshly caramelized, we all had a chance to give it a taste. It was sooo good! Rich, creamy, and lightly sweetened with a crunchy caramel top. Aside from the time it takes to make it all then it is very simple and easy desert.
The one snag we ran into was entirely my fault. In making the custard all the beating ended up with a thin foam on top of the egg custard from trapped air. I, being the genius I am, figured that the foam would disappear in the oven once it started baking. Long story short it did not disappear, and while it didn’t do any damage to the custard itself the remnants of the foam that baked onto the ramekin did burn while I was caramelizing the sugar. This didn’t affect the taste at all, but it did not smell great.
If you have the ramekins (and the food safe torch) I would definitely suggest trying out the recipe!
