Crème brûlée

How would like to create a classic french dessert at home with everyday ingredients. I used to see this dessert re-created in almost all of the television cooking shows and wondered how I could make this at home. Creamy vanilla custard with a burnt sugar top – sounds heavenly to me! And it turned out to be so easy to make – just four ingredients! Read on for the recipe. You will need four to six small ceramic ramekins for this recipe.

Ingredients:

1 pint heavy whipping cream
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
4 egg yolks
a pinch of salt.

Ingredients

4 egg yolks

Method:

Preheat oven to 350 F.
separate 4 egg yolks from the egg whites. You will need only the egg yolks for this recipe. Beat the egg yolks till they are mixed.
Mix together 1 pint heavy cream and one cup sugar in a microwave safe bowl. Heat this mixture in the microwave for about a minute and mix well.
Beat in eggs into the cream and sugar mixture. Add 1 teaspoon vanilla extract and a pinch of salt. Mix this well.
Pour into 6 small ramekins. If your ramekins are bigger this recipe might make only 4. Mine are a little smaller, so I can make 6 individual dessert cups with this.
Place the 6 cups into a large baking pan.
Fill the baking pan with boiling water only half way. The ramekins should only be about half submerged in the boiling water.

Bake at 350 F for 25 – 30 minutes.
Remove from oven and allow to cool and chill for 2 – 3 hours. You can either store the cooled ramekins in the fridge to use the next day or serve the same day once they are chilled.

For the burnt sugar topping: spread about 1 – 2 teaspoons of sugar over the custard. heat with a propane torch. Alternatively, you can heat the top of a spoon over a stove and lightly pass the spoon over the sugar. Do this several times till the sugar is burnt to your liking.