Crême brûlée. French traditional recipe

How to make crême brûlée . If we delve into French cuisine, we cannot help but agree with its history and importance.

Dishes such as the quiche lorreine , the vichyssoise , the onion soup , the Ficelle Picardeo or the tartiflette , live up to their fame. If you look at its sweet recipes , the undisputed brioche is one of the kings along with another one of the classics, the crême brûlee .

This dessert, whose literal translation from French is crema crema , consists of a cream based on milk, eggs, sugar and vanilla. The crême brûlée includes several stages in its preparation. A first mixture and cooking of the ingredients, a subsequent baking and a final finish based on burnt sugar until forming a thin and crisp layer of caramel.

La crême brûlée is a recipe with history, It is considered as the first mention of this dessert in France, its appearance in the cookbook Nouveau cuisinier royal et bourgeois , published in 1691. Still there are those who consider it the French adaptation of a Spanish dessert , specifically the Catalan cream . I imagine that surely because there was also a custom of preparing it in French Catalonia and the Languedoc region. Others think that it is actually a dish originating from English cuisine that, thanks to its fame, was adopted by its French neighbors.

Be that as it may, it is a very simple gastronomic delight to prepare and that anyone can do at home.

Preparation of cream for the crême brûlée

1. We start by preparing the water base in which we will place our molds with the crême brûlée. For this we fill with about 3 fingers of water, a large tray in which then the molds that we are going to use to bake the cream fit.
2. We turn on the oven at 160º C and put the source with the water in the oven. The intention is that the water is hot by the time we start baking the cream.
3. In a saucepan, heat the cream with the seeds of the vanilla bean. We also incorporate the pod itself, once opened.
4. We heat the cream for about 10 minutes, being very careful that it never boils. Remove from the heat and let it sit for 20 minutes.
5. In a bowl we beat the yolks with the sugar and a pinch of salt, until we have a foamy cream. We add the cream little by little, straining it and without stopping stirring until it is integrated with the rest of the ingredients.
6. We put the cream back in a saucepan and cook, without stopping stirring, over medium heat for a few minutes. We will see how the cream begins to thicken slightly.
7. We pour the mixture into the molds that we have chosen for the crême brûlée and place them inside the source that we have, heating in the oven. The water in the fountain should reach about half of the molds with the cream.

Baked and burned. Presentation of the crême brûlée

1. We preheat the oven to 160º C for 10 minutes. The oven must be hot when we add the crême brûlée.
2. Bake for 30 minutes at 160º C.
3. We remove the tray from the oven and let the cream cool on a rack. We will not keep the crême brûlée in the fridge until it has completely cooled. We can leave it overnight.
4. We cover each of the mold with 2 tablespoons of sugar. And with the help of a kitchen burner, we toast the surface sugar until there is a caramel. It only has to be left with a thin layer that will protect the cream.

We allow the caramel to cool and solidify before enjoying this traditional French dairy dessert. A gastronomic wonder, perfect for a classy after-dinner.

I encourage you to try it at home, a delicious burnt cream. You can see all the step by step photos of this  crême brûlée  in this album.