Vanilla Bean Creme Brulee (with variations)
Ingredients
- 12 large Egg yolks
- 1 Qt Heavy cream
- 3/4 cup Sugar (Plus extra for doing the brulee on top)
- 2 whole Vanilla Beans
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325
- Split the vanilla beans and scrape them into the heavy cream in a heavy pot. Bring to a simmer over medium high heat. Turn off the heat and let the vanilla flavor steep into the cream. Cool the cream. Remove the beans, but leave the scraped seeds.
- With a whisk or mixer, beat the sugar and egg yolks to the ribbon stage. Then beat on the cream. Mix until smooth and evenly incorporated.
- Pour the custard mix into individual ramekins in a high sided pan. Put enough water in the pan to come halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake for about 40 minutes. They should be just barely set. Wiggle one to see if it is still liquid in the center. Give more time if needed.
- When done, cool the custards. This should take at least an hour. You can refrigerate longer. They can be made up to 2 days in advance of serving.
- Right before service, Evenly sprinkle about a teaspoon to a tablespoon of sugar on top of each. You can stick them under a preheated broiler for a few minutes to melt the sugar or use a torch to evenly brown the tops. The sugar will melt and caramelize. be careful not to burn the caramel. Although, you can go as dark as you want. Serve as soon as possible. The caramel crust is only stiff for a short period. If you refrigerate it, it will get soft.
Notes
This is a basic recipe. You can add flavors and adjust to your liking. But, be careful with what you add. If it is too liquid, you will want to add more egg and sugar to accommodate the extra liquid. Also, be careful when using citrus as that can curdle the cream. If you want to do a lemon brulee, use zest and make a lemon simple syrup to fold in.
If you want to add Berries of any kind; again, I would cook them in a simple syrup, strain out seeds, and use more eggs because the syrup adds liquid which will prevent the custard from reaching the proper consistency.
When adding chocolate, either melt it in its own double boiler and fold it in or temper it in the cream. Because chocolate sets up at room temperature, there is no need to adjust the custard recipe.