Baked Sunday Mornings: Classic Crème Brûlée with Caramelized Brown Sugar

This week's Baked Sunday Mornings recipe requires just a few ingredients and not much effort, although it does have to be made in advance: it's Classic Crème Brûlée with Caramelized Brown Sugar. To make the custard, you steep a vanilla bean pod with its scraped seeds in hot cream, and then stir the cream into a mixture of egg yolks, sugar, and salt. After putting the mixture through a sieve, you pour the custard into ramekins and bake them in a bain-marie. After the cooked custards are cooled and thoroughly chilled, it's time to get out your blowtorch.

I followed the instructions to sprinkle dak brown sugar on top of the custard, and I tried to carmelize the sugar with a blowtorch. Actually, I tried a few times. But each time, the sugar promptly caught on fire and burnt to a crisp. I know that the top of a crème brûlée is supposed to be dark, but because the brown sugar was in clumps, I was ending up with black charcoal pellets on my custard. At least I was able to pick off the burnt nuggets without disturbing the custard, and after I sprinkled some coarse white sugar over the thin layer of brown sugar that was still stuck to the custard, I got the lovely brown top you see in the photo above.

When I tried carmelizing the top of a custard using white coarse sugar only, the color was a little more spotty, as you can see in the photo above. Either way, the tops were nice and crisp, yielding a satisfying thwack when hit with a spoon.

I loved the custard. It tasted like the world's best vanilla pudding -- creamy, thick, and fragrant with vanilla. Even though all of the vanilla seeds were collected at the bottom of each ramekin, the heady vanilla flavor was in every bite. And I say that the custard tasted like pudding because it was a little soft. It probably could have used another five minutes in the oven, but I enjoyed it immensely, just the way it was. (The custard in the top photo was particularly soft because it had survived multiple rounds with a blowtorch as I kept removing burnt brown sugar and adding more.)

The caramelized top added both textural interest and another rich flavor component, but I honestly think the custard was just as wonderful without it. Then again, I'm not one of those people who goes gaga for crème brûlée, but I do happen to think that pudding is the bee's knees. Either way, this is an easy and delicious dessert.

Recipe: "Classic Crème Brûlée with Caramelized Brown Sugar" from Baked Elements: Our 10 Favorite Ingredients by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito, recipe available here at Baked Sunday Mornings.