Crème brûlée is without a doubt one of the most elegant and sophisticated desserts in the world, and it can be varied in millions of ways. If we are familiar with the basic recipe, we can then combine it with other spices and all sorts of things to achieve an even more special effect. I now flavoured it with chai tea because of the winter weather, but we can make chocolate versions, almonds, orchards, nutmeg, tonka beans and I could list for a long time.
So around the event days, we tend to use a bunch of eggs anyway (if I have time, a liqueur and another egg recipe will come before the holiday) and crème brûlée is a perfect choice. If you don’t have a caramelizing gun (or a cooking torch if you like), you can also caramelize the sugar under the grill, but the perfect, hair-thin, crispy layer of caramel can be achieved with the gun.
INGREDIENTS FOR 4 PEOPLE:
600 ml of cooking cream
6 egg yolks
40 grams of caster sugar
1 stick of vanilla beans
2-3 sachets of chai tea blend (I didn’t use a blend, I threw myself together at home because luckily all the spices are on the shelf. Exactly: cardamom, star anise, pepper, coriander, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, black tea, fennel …)
sugar for caramelization
PREPARATION:
Let the cream warm up with the tea mixture, the scraped seeds of the vanilla bean and the scraped vanilla. Meanwhile, beat the egg yolks to the foam with the sugar, then filter the flavoured cream with constant stirring.
Then we have two options for how to make our desserts.
Option 1: Put 4 moulds in a water bath (water to half the moulds!), Fill them with the egg, spicy cream, then push them into a 150 ° oven for 30-35 minutes.
Option 2: Pour the egg spicy cream back into the saucepan and heat it to 85 ° with constant stirring. Then seal the gas underneath and pour into moulds.
Allow the creams to cool to room temperature and refrigerate overnight.
For caramelization, use very, very finely ground sugar – I usually grind cane sugar in a coffee grinder – using a small kitchen sieve, sprinkle it very thinly on the creams and then caramelize them. Sprinkle again very thinly with the sugar and caramelize again. This is repeated once more and then served.
