I love Creme Brulèe. Always have.
Except that it is one of those desserts that I have always eaten made by others, in restaurants, in pastry shops, in Paris etc etc. And very often, unfortunately, it is not made properly, but becomes a simple custard on which they toast sugar (sometimes even with alcohol #horror) … with often terrible results.
Hence the search for a truly excellent recipe to try to make it. If you look online you can find everything. Really everything: Catalan creams passed off as creme brulée, creams with starch, with milk, with cornstarch and with the most disparate quantities. Until one day, in the bookstore under my house, I find myself leafing through a delicious little book by Josè Marechal. A little book made entirely of creme brulée and its variations. In which on the first page there is the classic one, but in three versions (light, classic and delicious). And there are the real secrets of the creme brulée…
A resounding success. It’s the real creme brulée. The one that Amelie Poulain dreams of breaking with a teaspoon.
Ingredients:
- 500 ml of fresh cream
- 1 vanilla pod
- 5 egg yolks
- 80 g of granulated sugar
- 60 g of brown sugar (for the burn)
In a non-stick saucepan, heat half of the cream with the scrapings of the vanilla pod: it must almost boil. However, keep the other half (250 ml) aside, cold.
Separately, beat the egg yolks with the sugar until they “write” and are nice and fluffy and light.
At this point, slowly add the hot cream to the egg mixture, a little at a time and stirring to pasteurize the eggs without cooking them. Finally, add the cold cream.
Let it rest in the refrigerator for at least two hours: this will allow the mixture to create its own internal protein mesh and then become cream, without adding starches.
Take a baking pan (like a casserole dish) and fill it with two to three fingers of hot water. Pour the cold cream into the creme brulée molds (the ceramic ones) and place them in the pan with the water, as if it were a bain-marie.
Bake everything at about 90-95 °C in a static oven: it will be very important that the temperature is controlled and does not rise above 100 °C as the water in the pan must not boil (if possible, place a thermometer in the oven – a meat thermometer is fine – to be sure of the temperature). Cooking will last about 1 hour and a half: the cream will be ready when you can feel a light film forming on it by placing a finger on it.
Remove from the oven and let it cool in the fridge for at least 2-3 hours.
Once ready, pour a spoonful of brown sugar on the cream and cover the surface. With the appropriate gas burner, caramelize the sugar, remaining still on one point and, once it starts to caramelize, change points until the entire surface is caramelized (watch the video to get an idea)
And voilà… here is your amazing Creme Brulée, decorate it with some berries and it’s done!
