Creme Brulee Obsession

I have an unabashed obsession with creme brulee. It's one of those desserts that sounds so much harder than it is to make, it is also easy to change the flavors with small tweaks to the base recipe, and it's really delicious. Oh, and you get to play with fire =)

Here I am bruleeing on the beach. I made the custard at home, but assembled and torched it there, for perhaps the best beach picnic dessert ever. And it didn't even get sand in it.

Bananas foster creme brulee is one of my favorites, both for presentation and flavor. It is a slightly orange flavored custard, with sliced bananas layered on top. It then gets bruleed for 2 rounds, first with brown sugar (to get the rich carmelized flavor of bananas foster), then with superfine sugar to give it a nice crust to crack.

I really enjoy cooking for my friends, so the following pictures are from two creme brulee parties I held earlier this year.

For a party in January, I made 4 kinds of creme brulee. On the left is mixed berry, the back right is gianduja (chocolate hazelnut), the middle right is peach sabayon and the front right is amaretto espresso. You can also see on the table the variety of sugars (brown, turbinado, granulated, powdered and superfine) used for the different brulees.

Berry Creme Brulee

A combination of raspberries, blackberries and blueberries makes for a delicious berry creme brulee. Note that it doesn't use strawberries because they don't have enough structure once cooked. Once the berry creme brulee has been torched, and you can see the slightly darker yellow of the sugar crust on the top. This brulee is made with a typical vanilla cream base, poured over the fresh berries. The sweetness of the top crust, made with granulated sugar, plays off nicely with the slight tartness of the berries.

Peach Sabayon Creme Brulee

I had never made this particular type of creme brulee before, but thought it turned out pretty well. It is a peach sabayon, which is made with a champagne cream and peaches poached in champagne. Unlike most creme brulees, it isn't baked prior to torching, but rather the custard is made over the stove, then poured into the prepared ramekins. For some reason the cream didn't whip up properly after cooking, so I had to whip cream separately and fold it in for extra volume, but I ended up with sufficient cream for all the ramekins and a nice flavor, so it turned out fine.

Amaretto Espresso Creme Brulee

This amaretto espresso brulee I had made before and loved, so had to make again. It uses an espresso flavored custard base with a splash of amaretto for more flavor (I used Kahlua instead). The key is the slivered almonds placed on top, over which you sprinkle the sugar for torching. It is quite hard to keep the almonds from burning, so I like to use regular granulated sugar, which will liquify pretty quickly, but is large enough grained that it doesn't fall into the cracks between the almonds so easily.

Gianduja Creme Brulee

I somehow managed to not get any pictures of the gianduja creme brulee from the first party, but it was so delicious I made it again for the second, and was sure to get photos. The custard base is made with both melted chocolate and Nutella. Though the recipe calls for chopped hazelnuts on the top, over which you pour the sugar for the brulee,I found that the nuts burn (like the almonds) and they ruin the perfectly smooth texture of the cream, which is the best part of this dish. This version was made without the nuts, using white granulated sugar for the brulee.

Bananas Foster Creme Brulee 2.0

For the second party, I also made the bananas foster and berry brulees again. The crust on the banana one turned out beautifully, as you can see.