Crème Brûlée Ingredients
Good news: the needed basic ingredients for crème brûlée - cream, milk, eggs, sugar, and vanilla - are almost always found in anyone's kitchen!
Click here to know more about the equipment and here for tips and techniques for preparing crème brûlée.
In the Crème brûlée shop you kan buy the utensils and some of the ingredients needed.
Cream
In the supermarket, you will find various cream products.
For crème brûlée, any cream will work, as long as you use at least two egg yolks per cup of cream.
However, the richness will be different.
If the crème brûlée is to contain rich caramel and chocolate, it might be good to choose a light cream.
The biggest concern should be the purity of the cream: the only ingredient should be: cream!
Milk
Sometimes a small percentage of milk is used to provide a lighter taste to the crème brûlée or to keep the custard from thickening too much.
Choose whole milk if possible.
Eggs
Choose rather big eggs.
The eggs are the only binder of the crème brûlée, so using smaller eggs can result in a custard that would not bind enough.
To make them separate more easily, use eggs directly from the refrigerator.
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Sugar
(Fine) granulated sugar and light brown sugar work fine for the custard mixture, but for the caramel on top of the crème brûlée, a mixture of dry brown sugar (cane or maple sugar) and granulated sugar can produce a more flavorful dessert.
Never torch artificial sugars!
Spices
If you use spices you should infuse the cream with them during the scalding calling process and allow them to remain in the cream until is has cooled for more than 10 to 25 minutes.
Crème brûlée can be flavored with many different spices, even chipotle pepper or flowers (roses for example).
Vanilla
Vanilla flavoring in crème brûlée may be achieved by adding vanilla extract or by cooking vanilla pods in the liquid preparation.
A stronger aroma is attained if the pods are split in two (in the length), exposing more of a pod's surface area to the liquid.
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Salt
Just a pinch of salt (no more!) will spark all the flavors and accentuate the sweetness, even if you decrease the amount of sugar in the recipe.
Fruit
Any food can be added on top of the crème brûlée, but if you intend to add it to the custard before baking, it is important to consider the moisture content of the fruit and how much of it will be released during baking.
Dried fruits work very well, as well as bananas and most blueberries.
Liquid essences and liqueurs
If three instead of two egg yolks are used per cup of cream, up to an additional tablespoon of liqueur or essence may be added without making the custard too soft.
So just experiment with all the liqueurs that go well with cream!
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