{"id":1030,"date":"2013-01-24T16:55:12","date_gmt":"2013-01-24T16:55:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/?p=1030"},"modified":"2013-08-16T21:42:53","modified_gmt":"2013-08-16T20:42:53","slug":"1-creme-brulee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/archives\/1030","title":{"rendered":"1. Cr\u00e8me Br\u00fbl\u00e9e"},"content":{"rendered":"

My ’52 New Foods’ challenge is under way, and I have made cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9e for the first time. It is an immensely difficult thing to make, and uses a lot of specialist kitchen equipment, as you can see from the photo. I am, of course, being a little sarcastic here. Although I did use a blow torch, which I forgot to photograph.<\/p>\n

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I started small, and only made enough to fill two ramekins (although I had a third at the ready just in case there was too much). I used a BBC Good Food recipe<\/a>\u00a0since their recipes are often pretty good, and they also get rated by people who have used them.<\/p>\n

I made a couple of changes to their recipe. First, I used vanilla bean paste instead of actual vanilla beans, because it was at least half the price, and meant that I wouldn’t have to mess around with sieving out the pods, but it still has the seeds in it. Secondly, I didn’t cover the tray while cooking, as I didn’t have a deep enough baking tray. I almost made it without separating the eggs too, but realised just in time and put them aside to make chocolate brownies with later.<\/p>\n

There’s no need for me to show every step, so I’ll stick to a few comments about how to caramelise sugar. \u00a0After refrigerating the cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9es overnight, I took them out the of fridge for about three quarters of an hour before taking the blow torch to them. This is the wrong way to do it:<\/p>\n

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The problem was that I used too much sugar, and then moved the blow torch around too much, as I didn’t want to scorch the sugar. Fortunately, once the ‘caramel’ had set I could lift it off in one piece and then have another go. On my second attempt I used only enough sugar to just cover the surface, and evened it out using the back of a spoon (as the recipe suggests). I then heated a little bit at a time, working around in a spiral, until everything was melted. I then added another layer of sugar and did it again.<\/p>\n

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We ate them about half an hour later, and they were delicious. Naomi shared hers with the children, and I probably could have done with doing the same, as they were incredibly rich. But I managed to finish it off myself! I have no idea if they were right or not, as I’ve never eaten one before. When I took them out of the oven I was worried that I’d overdone them, and when I ate them I thought they might be a little underdone. However, Naomi had one at a restaurant a week or two earlier, and said that mine were better, so I guess they can’t be too bad!<\/p>\n

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My ’52 New Foods’ challenge is under way, and I have made cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9e for the first time. It is an immensely difficult thing to make, and uses a lot of specialist kitchen equipment, as you can see from the photo. I am, of course, being a little sarcastic here. Although I did use a …read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1040,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1030"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1030\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jamesots.com\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}