Creme Brule

This is one of those desserts that has been sitting in my head for years and never gotten around making it until now. Everyone knows this dessert and it requires no introduction. I had my first Creme Brule at Le Cirque and the experience etched deep into my memory.

A friend gave me a blow torch (thanks SC) recently and the final piece of the puzzle has arrived. It is time to make creme brule.

I used Le Cirque's recipe as a reference and the original recipe can be found here http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/le-cirques-creme-brulee. As usual, I made some slight adjustments.

(The original recipe is for 8 servings but I decided to reduce it to 2 servings since I am making it for the first time, but as you will see, even when I reduced the servings to 2, I still ended up with 4 creme brules)


Ingredients: (4 servings)
1 cup of heavy cream
splash of vanilla extract
small pinch of salt
2 whole eggs (I will explain this later)
5 tablespoon of regular sugar
Brown sugar for glazing



Instructions:
1. Preheat the oven to 300F.
2. Warm the cream and salt to gentle simmer.
3. Mix the eggs and the sugar completely.
4. Pour the warm cream into the egg/sugar mixture slowly.
5. Add the vanilla extract.
6. Strain the mixture.
7. Arrange the ramekins in a water bath.
8. Transfer the egg mixture into the ramekins
9. Cover the arrangement loosely with a foil
10. Bake for 1 hour.
11. Once the creme brule cools down, cover the top of the creme brule with a thin layer of brown sugar and flambé the sugar.

This is the very first flambe that I tried and as you can see, the result is not good. It took me about 4 tries to finally discovery the secret for a perfect caramelized sugar crust. Unfortunately, I did not take a photo of that.

As noted above, the original recipe called for EGG YOLKS ONLY but I accidentally use whole eggs instead. Guess what, there was no detectable difference between using whole eggs and egg yolks only. Yes, I made both kinds!!

Most recipes call for eating creme brule when it is at room temperature but for me, it is best when it is WARM. FRESH OUT OF OVEN WARM!