Pastry Foundations · Dessert
Creme Caramel, the Set Custard
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners, a silken, spoon-slow texture, leaving a faint perfume.
Ingredients
- 150 g caster sugar, for the caramel
- 40 g water, for the caramel
- 400 g whole milk
- 100 g double cream, 48 percent fat
- 150 g whole egg, about 3 medium
- 40 g egg yolk, about 2
- 80 g caster sugar, for the custard
- 1 vanilla pod, split and scraped
Equipment
Sheet pan
The skills inside
Tempering a custardSugar stages & caramel
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Cook the 150 g sugar and the water without stirring to a dark amber at 175C (347F), then pour at once into six 150 ml moulds and tilt to floor them evenly.
- Heat milk, cream and vanilla to 80C (176F), infuse 20 minutes, and whisk the eggs, yolks and 80 g sugar together without raising any foam. 20 min
- Pour the warm dairy on to the eggs, stir, strain, then skim every bubble from the surface; bubbles left there bake into holes.
- Sit the moulds in a deep tray, pour water at 60C (140F) two thirds up their sides and bake at 150C (300F) for 35 to 45 minutes. 45 min
- Pull them when the centre reads 80C (176F) and the whole custard shivers as one piece; a ripple that travels independently means it is still liquid inside.
- Chill at 4C (39F) for at least 4 hours, then run a knife round the rim and invert. 240 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
Tempering a custard 59 recipes
- The hot liquid went into the eggs a little at a time with constant whisking, and only then did everything go back to the pot.
- The heat under it stayed gentle throughout and it was never allowed to boil.
- Stirred continuously and right into the corners of the pan, where it thickens first and sets unnoticed.
- Judged by behaviour: it thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon and hold a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- Taken off before it looks finished, and strained. Residual heat carries it the rest of the way, and a custard held on the heat until it looks right arrives past right.
Where it goes wrong The hot liquid went in too fast, or the pot went back over full heat to save time. The yolks set into threads before they could thicken smoothly, and a scrambled custard does not come back; straining hides a little of it and nothing hides the rest.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Tawny Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry or bourbon
- From the Taps
- Barleywine
- Zero-Proof
- Cold-brew coffee
Caramel echoing caramel: oxidative aging built the same flavors into the glass that the pan built into the plate.
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