Crème Caramel is simply amazing… or at least in my opinion it is a little piece of heaven. Now I don’t often blog food because well I love food but my mom has been holding our Larousse Gastronomique hostage.
And well it’s really the only thing I cook out of… actually that’s not entirely true anymore, I’ve recently discovered some awesome food blogs. But that’s a very very recent thing, like last 6 months kindof recent so I still haven’t gotten quite into the food blogging yet.
But in some of the most exciting news I could ever possibly get, apparently Amazon has made it such that the Larousse is searchable online!!!
In my excitement I was talking to my friend, Jess, about it and I promised her a recipe. It’s my take on their version of Crème Caramel. So the first time I made it, I followed Larousse to the letter. But there was one day when I messed up a little but I mean it wasn’t a lot and I figured well what the hell let’s see what it does to the recipe, if it’s awful we don’t *have* to eat it, right? (Granted that goes against every principle my mother raised me to have but you gotta learn somehow, right?) Anyway it turns out that I (and everyone else) rather loved my little accident. So from that day onwards this is how I make my crème caramel.
Crème Caramel (serves ~10-12)
6 whole eggs
6 egg yolks (note you can use the leftover egg whites to make meringues!)
1 quart of whole milk (folks, this is dessert not even remotely healthy, if you don’t use whole milk it simply is not going to taste as good. just trust me, it will be worth it.)
3/4 cup sugar (this you can modify as you get more comfortable with the recipe, I don’t like mine to be super sweet so you might want to use more – the original recipe calls for quite a bit more)
1 vanilla bean (or you could use 2 tsp vanilla extract but the actual pod really does make a difference in flavor)
Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees. In a medium pot bring the milk to a boil with the vanilla bean. After it begins to boil take it down to a simmer and add in the sugar (taste this to see how sweet you’d like it to be). Allow it time for the vanilla to infuse so you want this to take about ~15 mins. In a large bowl blend the whole eggs, egg yolks. Remove the vanilla bean from the milk. Then gradually add the milk to the mixture, whisking quickly while doing so. Coat the bottom of a souffle dish (or any other bakeware that you’d like to use for this) with caramel.
(To make the caramel – take a small pan and place of very high heat. Pour a good amount of sugar into the pan and wait for it to caramelize. To help speed up the caramelizing process you can add little bits of water to the sugar periodically.)
Now pour the custard you just made into the souffle dish on top of the caramel. Place the dish into a bain marie (water bath) – I typically use a 1.5″ deep pan filled with water and with the souffle dish placed in the water, it’s relatively easy to make a makeshift bain marie without going out and buying something expensive. And place into the oven. Bake for about 30-40mins. You can check to see if it’s done by sticking a fork into the center, if it comes out completely clean then you’re all set – if there is anything at all sticking to the fork keep it in the oven until the fork comes out clean. Once it is done take it out of the oven and out of the bain marie. Let it sit out to cool. Quite frequently I will put it in the refrigerator to let it cool. When you are ready to serve bring out a fresh serving dish and then turn it over onto the serving dish. Also if you just trace the edge of the dish with a knife it’ll make it that much easier for it to slide right out and look just beautiful on your serving dish.
Oh and I just realized this is totally a gluten-free recipe. So all you gluten-free lovers this is just a wee piece of heaven that I happen to adore.
