Creme Brulee

I gave my husband a choice of desserts for a Father's day treat and he chose creme brulee. I've wanted to make it for a while anyway and it's also one of my favorites. It's such a simple yet elegant dessert, but I have to admit that I haven't made it from scratch for some time. I guess I've just found it easy to get the creme brulee mix from the store when I was in a pinch for a dinner party dessert, but never again. I think there was a time several years ago when I didn't have as much patience and did not temper the eggs slowly enough where I ended up with a curdled creme. So, I took a deep breath, gathered the finest ingredients, researched recipes and tried again.

Don't worry - this cream is not burnt or dirty...it's vanilla. Instead of using a recipe that called for vanilla extract, I used a recipe with vanilla bean. I chose to use Madagascar vanilla beans that I got from a local gourmet food store. I scraped the vanilla bean seeds and added the vanilla bean itself and the seeds to the cream to bring to a boil.

While the cream became infused with fresh vanilla, I prepared the egg yolks and sugar.

The vanilla cream was SLOWLY added to the egg yolks to temper them so as to not cook them and end up with scrambled eggs.

This final mixture was added into my ramekins of various shapes and sizes and I baked them in a water bath with the water filled part way up the ramekins. They were placed in the oven VERY carefully so as to not get any water in the custard!

They cooked very nicely and I love the tiny specks of vanilla in the custard.

I added more sugar to the top and placed them under the broiler on high to burn the sugar and make that lovely crunchy sugar crust. I garnished it with a sliced strawberry and a dollop of fresh whipped cream. I had several extras which I wrapped with saran and foil to freeze. When I'm in a pinch for a dessert now, I can just thaw those, top them with the sugar and broil for dessert instead of using a mix!