Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Crème Brulée?

Benoit recently found out that he would be on a worksite on the seaside for the next six months.  Considering that I am still on vacation and that now it is in a way my duty to follow "my man," I agreed to spend the next few weeks with him.  We are currently living in a fully equipped, two story house with a 10 minute walk to the beach.  Life is hard, I know.  I am currently enjoying sleeping in, watching tv (finally, we don't have a TV connection in Nantes), and spending a few hours in the afternoon working on my much needed tan.  Depsite the dream of such a situation, I cannot help but too confess that it's not as fun when you spend all day by yourself and that it rains 4 out of 7 days a week.  Hmmm...I am trying to find things to keep myself busy and not too lonely, which consists of activities such as reading, blogging, doing french cross words, watching movies, working on my head for the wedding in two weeks, and taking advantage of the fully stocked kitchen!  Last night, I tried my hands at a first attempt of homeade crème brulée, inspired by the frequent thoughts vers my father...HI DADDY!! :) Result: I cooked it too long, I bought 33cl of liquid fresh cream instead of 50cl of thick fresh cream that the failed to tell me since it was pubished in the early 1990's--apparently a time where they thought that the cook would just somehow "know" to use 50cl of think cream when noting "a small container of fresh creme." Again, being the French gentleman that he is, Benoit finished his portion without saying a word until not one bite was left in his dish.  Afterward, he told me that it was "pas terrible" which literally translates into something like "I am trying to be nice in saying that its not terrible but there are not too many things that tastes worst than this."  He described my crème brulée as "egg cream." Hmmm, it's something that I need to work on, but then again, it was my first attempt at THE most famous French dessert.

Would you like to have a shot at it?  I would love to hear what works and what doesn't if any of you feel adventurous enough to take on such a task!  Come on, give it a shot.  I can assure you that yours will be better than my "egg cream!"

Recipe for Crème Brulée:

Ingredients: (for 4 people)
- 4 eggs
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 1/5 cup brown sugar
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 2 cups of heavy whipping creme

1) Preheat oven to 325°F

2) In a large bowl, add eggs and sugar.  Beat with a fork until the mixture starts to become somewhat white (small bubbles will start to form).  Add cream and vanilla to egg-sugar mixture and continue mixing with a fork until homogeneous.

3) Pour mixture into 4 recipiants that are oven safe (see pictures below):
or

Place the recipiants with creme brulee in an oven safe pan, filled half-way with water (see image below):



Bake for around 1 hour.  Once the crème brulée starts to rise, they are done!

4) Let cool.  Place them in the refrigerator.

5) At the moment you want to serve them, sprinkle with brown sugar.  Heat a metal spoon on the stove (make sure you don't hold the spoon with your bare hands while heating it!  Use a think oven mit).  Once the spoon is heated, immediately place it on the crème brulée in order to "burn" or rather "caramelize" the brown sugar.  Serve immediately.

Bonne chance!

2 comments:

  1. I will give it a try next weekend! (Busy this weekend.) When you are dancing at the wedding, I will be cooking creme brulee!

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