#and barely baked since and like. yeah. pandemic made *gestures* worse

[poisonhemloc]

y’all feel free to ignore me i needed somewhere to put this recipe where i can find it again

Adapted from this recipe which is my favorite chocolate creme brulee recipe

Ingredients: 2 cups whipping (or heavy) cream, 3 small lemons (zested and juiced) 1 tbsp vanilla extract, 6 egg yolks, 6 tbsp sugar. Also, spare sugar, for caramelizing the top. Also also, medium heavy saucepan, at least two spoons/a wooden spoon and a whisk/some kinda stir thing, baking tray (like a 9x13 thats like twoish inches deep)(its not too important its just gotta fit the ramekins), 6 ramekins (small bowls essentially), hot water.

Instructions:

1. Put cream and lemon zest in a medium, heavy saucepan.

2. Bring to simmer. Do not walk away at any point while the cream is on the stove. No, not even to take cat pictures. It will know. And it will boil over.

2.5. You can, though, if you’re keeping a close eye on it, get your eggs separated while you wait for the simmer (i have counter space right next to the stove so doable for me)

3. Remove from heat. Add vanilla and lemon juice, stir, let it continue to sit off heat.

4. Stir together eggs and sugar in whatever size container will fit them.

5. Temper the sugar/egg mix- get your hot cream (if you let it cool down all the way, you have either more patience or worse object permanence than I do) next to the sugar/egg bowl, slowly pour in a spoonful while stirring the eggs. Do that a couple more times til you think the mix is hot enough you’re not gonna end up with scrambled eggs, then pour the sugar/egg/cream into the rest of the cream, stirring quickly the entire time (get a friend if you need to for this)(I temper bigger stuff like pudding for banana pudding this same way and it is easier with a second person helping but even if they had thumbs my cats wouldn’t help)

5.5. Strain the mix (ideally into a good container for pouring)(you don’t have to but zest texture makes me gag and if you accidentally scrambled some eggs this’ll take that out)

6. ‘let cool to room temperature’ (jk) Oven to 300 F, put a rack in the middle of it.

7. Grab the baking pan, arrange ramekins inside baking pan (I cluster everything next to each other for this bit) Pour cream into ramekins, as evenly as possible. Pour hot water into the baking tray until they’re half submerged (I now move everything to be evenly spaced)

8. Bake until just set- about 40 min (the center might be a little jiggly still but the side shouldn’t be). Let cool (’on racks’ listen I get them out of the bath and onto the stovetop and they cool there it’s fine. it’s fine)

To serve- you need that crunchy sugar layer. You’ve got some options here (don’t use brown sugar for this)

You can- spread sugar over the top of each thing you’re gonna eat and either torch it if you’re fancy and you have one or put them on a cookie tray and put it all under a broiler for a bit (watch it, broilers love burning your things as much as milk loves boiling over)

You can also put sugar into your hopefully clean heavy medium saucepan and melt it and pour that on top, then put the brulees back in the fridge til you can touch them. (I prefer to do this, because i want More Crunch Contrasting Texture and trying to torch/broil the unmelted sugar burns bits for me)

Have fun, use this as a jumping off point. I’ve done lemon raspberry off this, and if I get my brain cooperative I’m gonna mess with some more citrus fruits