I chose crème brûlée for my third recipe because it displays a different, smoother texture of dessert. My last two recipes utilized a combination of separately prepared egg yolks and whites to achieve a fluffy volume, but crème brûlée relies on just egg yolks to make a custardy, smooth dessert. Abandoning egg whites altogether puts the spotlight on the yolks, which form a silky and very rich texture. Besides the egg yolks, the crème brûlée only has 4 other ingredients, which is surprising given how delicious it is!
Here is a link to the recipe I used: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/9039-vanilla-creme-brulee?algo=cooking_doc2vec_weight_1&fellback=false&imp_id=333550722&action=click&module=RecirculationRibbon&pgType=recipedetails&rank=2
And here are some photos with explanations of the baking process:
The first step is to heat the cream, vanilla, and sugar together, until it is hot, but not super hot, because it is immediately combined with the egg yolks to form a custard.
The two separate components before being mixed together.
I forgot to take a picture of the poured custard before it went into the oven, but here is how it looked right after it came out! I had to use one large ceramic pie tin instead of smaller ramekins, because I don’t have ramekins in my home kitchen. I think this slightly affected the baking time and caused the custard to be a little less smooth due to having to stay in the oven significantly longer.
After refrigerating the custard for a few hours so it could thicken up, I sprinkled the top with several teaspoons of granulated sugar so that the entire thing was coated. I would have preferred to use a blow torch to brûlée the dessert for a more even color, but we also don’t have a blow torch, so I put it under the broiler for a couple minutes.
This is how it looked after broiling the sugar! It wasn’t as even or as pretty as I would have liked, but the brûlée technique worked well and created a crackly, hard top.
When we dug into the crème brûlée, it was absolutely delicious. The two different textures — shattered, caramel-y top and smooth eggy vanilla custard — made for a wonderfully complex bite that seemed way more complicated than just 5 total ingredients!
My family really enjoyed the dessert. Here are their comments:
“It has excellent contrasting textures – crunchy – chewy – and the slightly burnt, caramelized sugar on top is perfect.” – Mom
“It’s delicious! Sort of like rice pudding with caramelized custard!” – Dad
“I like that the texture is a little different from a normal dessert.” – James (little brother)
I would definitely make crème brûlée again, but I would want to have a few more tools on hand, like a kitchen blow torch and ramekins for more consistent baking and appearance.
