Burnt Offering

The spheres aligned in such a way that I made Creme Brulee for the first time ever this week. It took several hours over two days and by the time I was finished I'd almost forgotten why I started. As I recall, the train of thought that led to my caramelized custard caper went something like this:

1. Hmmm. I have many, many egg yolks left over after baking the gluten-free Cake for a Very Special Occasion. Whatever shall I do with them?
2. I know. I will check the recipes at Clarence Court's elegant website. If they can't tell me what to do with my yolks, nobody can.
3. Why - here's one! Creme brulee! What better way to christen my brand new chef's torch, residing as yet untried in the string drawer in the kitchen?
4. As an added bonus, I will supplement my repertoire with another gluten-free dessert.

And so on. When I finally settled down and examined the recipe, I was somewhat taken aback. Although I have never fabricated creme brulee in my life, I am not unfamiliar with the procedure. What could be easier? You make a thick vanilla custard, sprinkle some sugar on top, zap it with some fire, and everybody wins.

Sigh.

My first concern was that the Clarence Court recipe, unlike every other for creme brulee I have seen, does not call for the custard to be baked. I was suspicious because the recipe itself is weirdly repetitive and contradictory once you get to the key bit about cooking the custard.

I checked the recipe's pedigree, to see if there was anything strikingly bizarre about its origin. Although the blurb mentioned an English version called Trinity Burnt Cream (characterized by a lack of vanilla and less general sweetness), the recipe on the CC website claimed to be for the actual genuine Froggy article. The author, Mark Hix, is a prolific English cookbook writer and celebrity chef, so I guess you could say his credentials are in order, apart from the French part. According to Wikipedia, Hix served Keith Floyd his last meal before the latter expired of a heart attack a few hours later, although foul play was not suspected (the subsequent offering on his restaurant menu of Keith Floyd's Last Lunch struck some as ghoulish, or at least in very poor taste - but it's the sort of thing I would do if I had a restaurant of my own. Make of that what you will - particularly if you are planning to come to my house for dinner.)

Anyway, it looked as though Hix knew what he was doing brulee-wise, so I decided to give the recipe a whirl. The proof of the custard is in the jiggle, I always say!

I followed the recipe to the letter, whipping up a batch of vanilla-scented creamy goodness and heating it in my round-bottomed saucier until the mixture was very thick and hot. I chilled it quickly by whisking it in a bowl set inside another bowl of ice (a trick garnered from Julia); poured the eggy elixir into ramekins, which I popped into the newly spacious fridge to spend the night.

The next morning, when I tipped one of the dishes expectantly to see whether it had set during the wee hours, several tablespoons of sweet deliciousness slopped out all over my slippers. Nope - definitely not the correct texture.

As I drove to work I pondered my misfortune. Perhaps the creme would miraculously stiffen up when I attacked it with my blowtorch? Not wanting to be prejudiced too quickly against what I shall call The English Method and ever eager for new experimental challenges, I decided to engage in some R&D when I got home. I would bake some of the custards in a water bath before setting them alight and brulee the rest as they were, thus establishing empirically which method produced the more glorious (or at least, more successful) dessert.

Later that afternoon I resumed the trial. Two of the ramekins I left alone. I popped the remaining victims into a roasting pan filled halfway up with boiling water and baked them at 325 deg F for half an hour (as per destructions in the big yellow Gourmet cookbook). When the cremes were firmer (but still wobbly when set upon with tongs) I removed them from the hotbox and stored them in the garage so they could cool quickly.

Then, the moment I had been waiting for! I sprinkled each of the custards with organic turbinado sugar left over from my fridge-a-lade project and - with a gleam in my eye and arson in my heart - I barbecued them with my fabulous new toy. It took a little practice, but was terribly terribly extremely fun to do.

When they were all bubbly and brown and the kitchen smelled like a cotton candy booth I popped the ramekins back in the fridge until dinner time.

They looked awesome, if I say so myself.

After dinner, we addressed our desserts in the proper spirit of inquiry and constructive criticism. In all cases, the burnt sugar crust shattered in precisely the required manner when tapped with a spoon. The baked custards were creamy and soft, but held their own under their caramelized topping. My only niggling complaint was the vanilla flavor - not having any vanilla beans on hand I used extract (albeit very good extract), which just isn't the same. Lesson: always use vanilla beans in creme brulee.

The unbaked custards, prepared according Mark Hix's instructions, were all wrong. They were more sabayon than custard, and the texture was not sufficiently robust to withstand the challenges of the brulee. We scraped all the crispy bits off the tops and munched them happily while declaring his recipe's English Method a failure.

The moral of my story is Always Bake Your Creme Brulee.

 And beware of Englishmen bearing French recipes.