I decided to have a tea party with a few lovely friends and made some crème brûlée based on the recipes at Cooking for Engineers and Food Network. The amount of egg yolk varies between recipes and in my experience, most people won't notice the difference if you skip the vanilla bean and just use vanilla extract. Paula Deen has a chocolate version.
Ingredients:
- 16 egg yolks
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 quart of heavy cream
- 1 vanilla bean
Instructions:
- Preheat the oven to about 300° F.
- Put the heavy cream and vanilla bean in a pot and bring to a boil on medium-high heat.
- While waiting for the oven to heat and cream to boil, mix the egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl.
- Let the cream cool a bit so that it doesn't cook the eggs and make it lumpy. Slowly add the cream to the egg/sugar by ladling in a small amount at a time while whisking it together.
- Pour the mixture through a strainer to get any lumps out.
- Divide the mixture into your ramekins and set those in a baking pan of boiling water in the oven. This water keeps the custard from getting too hot and cooking too quickly on the sides.
- Bake for 45 minutes or so and check it. It should jiggle a little in the middle.
- Let it cool and throw it in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.
- Next day! Cover the top with sugar and dump off the excess.
- Torch! I used a propane torch. They're about $10-15 at a hardware store and their lovely blue flames are hot enough to quickly caramelize the sugar. When you're done, you can even use it to fix your leaky pipes.