Crème Brûlée

I think I have over simplified my love of cooking and cookbooks. It goes beyond just books and recipes, although they are probably the biggest collection. I love kitchen shops. I love gadgets and doodads for the kitchen. I love fancy serving-ware, crockery, glasses and so on. I also love cooking shows. Lifestyle Food is one of my go to channels if I am stuck for something to watch, Jamie Oliver, Gordon Ramsey and Nigella Lawson are some of my absolute favourites. I also love the cooking competitions like My Kitchen Rules, Masterchef, Great *insert country* Bake Off. You get the idea. I always feel inspired and awed after watching these shows. Sometimes I am awed by the skill and the creativity of the chefs and amateur cooks. Other times I find myself screaming at them because I can see the mistakes they are making.

This is a very realistic cartoon of how I watch cooking shows!

One dish in particular that I have always wanted to try, but have always been scared to because of the failures I have witness on these beloved shows, is crème brûlée. I mean what isn't there to love about that dessert? Smooth creamy custard with a caramelized crunchy top? Sounds like heaven to me. But too many times I have sat there and watched those amateur cooks scramble their desserts or have terrible flavour, or any other disaster you might expect in a cooking competition. Mum bought a cute little crème brûlée set with ramekins and a little blow torch many years ago so that we could attempt our own. However we have both been too nervous to actually try.

This week I decided it was time I got rid of those worries and made crème brûlée at last, I mean I will never know if it is as hard as it seems until I try will I? So I spent several days reading different recipes, hints and tips. I ended up flitting between two different recipes on Taste.com. After settling on these recipes and a trip to the supermarket for ingredients, I took a deep breath, donned my apron (did I mention I also love pretty aprons?!), laid out all my ingredients and set to work.

I was so scared of boiling the cream that it took longer than expected to reach the right temperature but I got there eventually. The next step was possibly the most nerve wracking as I knew the eggs could split and scramble if the cream mixture was too hot or I did not whisk fast enough. I took my time adding the cream mixture and whisked like my life depended on it! It looked fine at this point *breathe slight sigh of relief* but it still had to bake, set and be brûléed. When they came out of the oven I was able to breathe another slight sigh of relief, they wobbled! This gave me hope that they weren't vanilla flavoured scrambled eggs!

Finally it was time for the final step. The brûlée. I will admit it was fun to use the blow torch, something I had never done before. I used slightly too much sugar on the top of the first crème brûlée, so it took quite a bit to caramalize. But that was okay as I had one to spare. The next three came out wonderfully. Now all that was last was to plunge that spoon in and hope that the top cracked and the inner was delicious and creamy. Of course my mother felt the need to tease at this point. She was the first to crack into hers, she looked over at my while inspecting her spoonful and said with a completly straight face, 'Well Corinne do you want to know what happened?'. My heart dropped, I was sure I had failed. Then she cracked a smile, popped the spoon into her mouth and finished her sentence, 'The top cracked and it is smooth and creamy in the middle.'

Success! A little leap of joy, a whole lot of 'Mmmmmms', lots of bowl scraping and a very satisfied smile later, and I can now say that I have successfully cooked crème brûlée and they rocked!

You can find the recipes HERE and HERE.

As always thanks for stopping by and please leave a comment. Let me know if you try one of the recipes and what you thought. Until next Monday, see ya!