Crème-to-the-Brûlée

Vanilla crème brûlée, with strawberry, white chocolate spoons and a smooth salted caramel disc - topped with crunchy honeycomb pieces. 

Mouth watering yet?


I can't deny that this is one of my ultimate fave desserts. The baked creamy goodness that instantly melts on your tongue, exposing its vanilla flavour as it begins to tango with your tastebuds. Oh but the best part, the fun part, cracking the burnt crunchy sugar with your spoon as you begin to dig in. The smooth and the crisp become an unbeatable fusion of textures.

And it's no wonder it's sort of named after these textures - crème brûlée - 'burnt cream' in French, is the most delicious yet simple of desserts to make and here's how I made it:

Ingredients:

For the vanilla crème brûlée:
440ml double cream
100ml full fat milk
55g caster sugar
1 vanilla pod/3tsp good quality vanilla extract
5 egg yolks

White Chocolate spoons:
200g white chocolate chips

(Smooth) Salted Caramel Disc:
80g salted butter
75g soft light brown sugar
75g caster sugar
120ml cream
1/2tsp sea salt
Honeycomb pieces (bought)

Method:

• Combine the double cream, milk and vanilla extract (or a slit vanilla pod) into a saucepan and leave to the side.
• Separate the yolks from the whites and place in a mixing bowl, adding the caster sugar. The separating is probably the only tricky part to this - well I find it a pain to be honest! Then whisk the yolks and sugar together until pale and slightly fluffy.
• Bring the saucepan onto the heat until the sides begin to bubble a bit.
• Gradually with a hand whisk, stir in the hot cream mix into the egg. You'll see it will foam up once done, try get rid of all the foam with a large spoon.
• Pour into ramekins, jars or a big dish and place these in a ban marie filled with boiled water about 1.5-2cm high and pop it into the oven for 30-35 minutes.
• You want the crème brûlée to be slightly wobbly in the middle and not completely set. Place these in the fridge and scatter teaspoon of caster sugar on the top surface and then blowtorch until its burnt! Do this closer to the serving time and pop 'em back in the fridge.

And that's pretty much it! For the additional extras and decoration:
To make the chocolate spoon:

• Melt white chocolate in a bowl over simmering water (water bath) until runny and fill up the spoon moulds, placing them in the fridge.

The smooth salted caramel disc:

• Melt the butter and sugars in a saucepan for 3 minutes or until dissolved, swirling it from time to time.
• Add the cream and sea salt and swirl again - get those hips shaking! I mean, use a wooden spoon to stir the sugar mixture…
• Once amalgamated, taste to check if there's enough salt and then pour into a jug to set!

This makes quite a bit, so you can store it up to a week to use for other nommy desserts. Or you know just to eat with a spoon instead of yer good ol' Ben and Jerry's!

Make a circle onto a serving plate, (I used a cookie cutter) and top with honeycomb pieces. Okay so, I had recently bought some ready made ones from Lakeland and used these, but if you want the homemade recipe check out my Get Loose: Chocolate and Honeycomb Mousse recipe!

That's about it! I added chocolate dots around each component to finish off, as well as a strawberry in each jar, as this creamy concotion goes well with berries and maybe there were some growing in my garden…

Cute little desserts, don't you think?


Dainty Cook x