Crème Brûlée (Recipe Included)

Crème brûlée...mmmmmmm...lil dishes full of fatty joy, topped with a crunchy layer of sugary goodness. They're surprisingly simple to make (with the exception for funky ovens). There are few ingredients required and a lot of flavor variations to experiment with.

Ingredients:

1 qt. heavy cream

2 vanilla beans (seeds scraped, all of it goes in)

3.25 oz sugar 

12 egg yolks

3.25 oz sugar

That's that.

Now to make it:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees (F) 
2. Heat the first three ingredients in a medium saucepan
3. In a separate medium size bowl, mix the egg yolks & second addition of sugar together with a whip (aka whisk)
4. When the heavy cream mix reaches a boil, temper it into the egg mixture*
5. Return everything back to the pot and cook on the stove for just a minute, constantly stirring
6. Strain everything into a container with a spout-like thing...(we use a gallon measure), if you don't have one just strain it into a bowl and ghetto-scoop it into the dishes with a ladle. 
7. Set up your crème brûlée dishes on a sheet pan. You'll need a large container of ice & another container that will be used to pour water. And make sure the inside of your dishes are completely dry.
8. Pour your strained mixture into the dishes until almost full (not too full though!) 
9. Now, gently fill the sheet pan with ice (arouuuund the crème brûlée dishes). If any water drops into a filled dish, dump it and redo...the water will ruin it. 
10. Remove air bubbles from the surfaces by using either a blowtorch (gently!) or paper towels. 
11. They're ready to go in the oven meow. Put them in the oven, now, pour water in the sheet pan over the ice. 
12. Bake for about 30 minutes. Make sure that there is always water in the sheet pan. Refill if needed. Check the doneness with your finger. They shouldn't jiggle, you should see that it set. If they jiggle, keep em in there. If the top is browning and they're still jiggly...turn the oven off and leave them in there. Check on them in 10 minutes. 
13. Take them out when they're done & chill

*Tempering: stream in hot liquid into eggs slowly (while mixing!) to avoid making scrambled eggs...putting hot into cold gently...yeah. Bein' real casual with the explanation, sorry. 

And right before service: TORCHIN' TIME!

Bust out your little torch and a dish full of sugar. Sprinkle your dishes with sugar (don't just dump it on there) and go over the sugar with the torch. You'll see the transformation. Repeat 3x to get a nice caramelized crust. 

Yeeee pretty easy! 

Now, variations:

• Chocolate: add good quality chocolate into the heavy cream mixture when it's hot. There's no specific amount...but I recommend adding enough so that it looks pretty dark. Remember that you're going to be pouring that into a bunch of egg yolks. The color will lighten and you don't want to end up with a milk chocolate look--cause that's lame. 
• Orange/lemon: add zest (~1-1.5 ea.) of desired citrus fruit into the heavy cream so that the oils can steep and the flavors will come out!
• Chocolate orange: put those two together ^^
• Ginger: add fresh chopped ginger into the heavy cream and let it steep
• You can pipe a little layer of ganache in the bottom of the dishes
• You can spread a little marmalade in the bottom of the dishes, too
• You can add halved berries in the bottom of the dishes
• You can add berries AND ganache to the bottom of the dishes
• ^^for those, just put the stuff in the bottom of the dishes & pour the mix right over

I think you get it, you can really do a lot with this...I really want to try making green tea crème brûlée but I haven't had experimenting time yet! 

Oh yeah, and if you don't want to be a total fatty and eat all of this crème brûlée in one night, it can be saved in the fridge. I'd keep it in there for 3 days max. Just wrap it up and pour it into dishes when you want more!