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Best crème brûlée ever.When I die, please bury me in a giant vat of this amazingly perfect custard. It’s so incredible, it made crème brûlée hating Dishboy Scott moan and proclaim it to be about the best thing he’s ever put in his mouth.
It’s that good. It’s so good my husband Jesse, who could care less about dessert, inhaled half the batch in less than 24 hours.
Make this custard and you’ll thank me again and again. In fact, skip dinner and eat this instead. Why bother with dinner at all when there could possibly be such a perfect dessert in your life?
Blackberry Crème Brûlée with Brown Sugar Sauce
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Like magic, brown sugar makes it’s own sauce on the bottom of each ramekin.
Special tools you’ll need are 8 four-ounce ramekins, a fine mesh sieve (strainer) and a torch of some kind. I use Jesse’s shop propane torch (more fire=more fun), but you can buy a little brûlée torch at most fancy kitchen stores.
2 cups (1 pint) heavy cream
4 egg yolks
2/3 cup sugar
Pinch of Salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
About 1 cup or so fresh or frozen blackberries
8 teaspoons dark brown sugar, divided
Sugar for brûlée
1. Place 8 four-ounce ramekins in a metal 9x13-inch pan. Preheat the oven to 300 degrees and set a kettle of water to boil.
2. Place the heavy cream in a 3 quart saucepan. Cook over medium heat stirring often until just the point of boiling. Set aside.
3. Meanwhile, in a medium sized bowl whisk together egg yolks, 2/3 cup sugar, salt and vanilla extract. Whisking the entire time, slowly pour about 1 cup of the hot heavy cream into the egg mixture. Then pour the egg mixture into the heavy cream while whisking.
4. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve into a large clean bowl. Place 1 teaspoon brown sugar into each ramekin. Place blackberries over brown sugar so they are nearly touching, but not packed. Slowly ladle cream mixture evenly into the ramekins, scraping all of it out of the bowl with a spatula.
5. Pull the oven rack out about half way and place the pan on it. Pour the hot water into the pan until it’s about half way up the ramekins. Bake for 35 minutes. Custards should be mainly set around the edges, but the center will still be jiggly.
6. Carefully move the custards to a cooling rack. Once cool, move to the refrigerator and chill for at least four hours.
7. To Brûlée: Sprinkle custard tops with about a teaspoon of granulated sugar and torch with fire until deeply golden brown pulling back the torch as needed so the sugar doesn’t char.
Recipe and photographs by Laura Flowers.
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