Creme Brulee

When you are back to blogging after so long, you better be back with a bang. So, I am back with a dessert that is fancy and yet so simple to make.

I can't remember how long ago (may be 3 or 4 years) it was, that I purchased a Creme Brulee set with ramekins and torch. When I bought it, honestly I didn't know what creme brulee was or how it tasted except for having seen in Food Network how they work that torch and I thought it would be fun to burn food intentionally :). Since then I have tried creme brulee in restaurants and know what it should feel and taste like with the hard sugar crust on top and smooth custard below.

I followed Alton Brown's recipe for making Creme Brulee. I pretty much followed the recipe to the tee, except for using pure vanilla extract instead of the scraped vanilla bean and I used just regular sugar instead of vanilla sugar. The texture of the crust and the custard were exactly as I expected. Yum! Now, I just need to invest in a good quality torch and more ramekins cos 4 teeny ramekins are never gonna be enough :)

Note: As the recipe mentions, do leave the custard outside the refrigerator 30 minutes before torching. I was impatient when I did my next batch the next day and torched right out of the refrigerator and the crust wasn't as good as the day before.

Here are a few pictures from this successful experiment. Karthik helped with torching.

Torched and ready to serve. 

 And Ayya relishing it :) !