Crème Brûlée

I borrowed a bunch of cookbooks from the library for Christmas time. One of the books was by Julia Child. I had some leftover cream from making bread pudding and decided to attempt to make Julia's crème brûlée from it. I love ordering this dessert from a restaurant, but have always been too intimidated to make it. I made some minor modifications from the original recipe (omitted a few steps and didn't use orange zest). Here's what happened:


Stirred together cream and vanilla extract in a saucepan and brought to a simmer.




Beat egg yolks and sugar together.




Gradually stirred the cream mixture into the egg mixture. You're supposed to go slowly in order to avoid coming out with scrambled eggs.
Poured the combined mixture into ice cream bowls. I don't have ramekins.



Put the bowls in baking dishes that were filled with water. The water keeps the oven steamy and moist inside.




Took the bowls out of the oven when the custards were set, about half an hour. Then put the custards in the fridge to chill for about 4 hours.




Sprinkled brown sugar on top of the custards.




Time to form the crust. This can be done either with a blowtorch or underneath a broiler. My dad has a blowtorch, however I don't know where it's been and what he's used it for in the past, so I decided to go with the broiler method.

Put the bowls back in the oven and turned the broiler on. I set the rack in the middle of the oven and sat and watched the sugar turn colour. Took the bowls out after the sugar darkened in colour, a few minutes.




Rich creamy goodness!




The custard part of the crème brûlée tasted really good, however the crust wasn't exactly what I had hoped for. The crust was hard and provided a nice contrast to the creamy custard, but the sugar didn't really caramelize. It was still powdery in some spots, and um... very very brown in other spots. I may have put too much sugar on top. I think the next time I try this, I'll use less sugar for the crust. A blowtorch might also be helpful for precision browning.