TWD: Crème Brulée

This week's Tuesdays with Dorie is from Mari at Mevrouw Cupcake. She chose for us to make one of my favorite desserts, Crème Brulée from Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan. Crème Brulée literally means "burnt cream." It is a custard dessert that has a layer of caramelized sugar on top of it. You can find the complete recipe for this crème brulée here. It is a very simple recipe and is different than other recipes for crème brulée that I have read/tried. It is cooked at a very, very low temperature and doesn't employ the use of a water bath, which is nice. Fortunately I was given this crème brulée set a few years back for Christmas, so I didn't have to worry about trying to broil the sugar, I torched it instead (which is always fun).




The only change I made to the recipe is to substitute one of the teaspoons of vanilla called for in the recipe with one teaspoon of vanilla bean paste. It enhanced the vanilla flavor even more, and I just love seeing the bits of vanilla bean in the custard.




This is a very easy, elegant dessert. You can make it up to two days ahead, and just caramelize the sugar on top right before serving. Therefore it would be a great choice for dinner parties. The only thing I would do differently is possibly cook it a bit longer. I cooked my crème brulée for 60 minutes, and although the centers were set, it was a bit softer than I preferred. I would probably cook it for about 10 minutes more next time.