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This Creme Brulee recipe is delicious, creamy, and the most perfect French dessert. Made with 5 basic ingredients, easily made ahead of time, and absolutely scrumptious your guests will love this creme brulee. Step-by-step photos help you make the Best Creme Brulee recipe.
Creme Brulee is a classic recipe you need in your repertoire. Served at fancy restaurants, luckily there is nothing fancy about making creme brulee. Just a few ingredients and a little patience will help you make this gorgeous custard with a caramelized hardtop.
One of my favorite things about creme brulee is that you can make it ahead of time, the same reason I adore cheesecake. So this is the perfect dessert to make for a dinner party, you can make the creme brulee up to two days ahead of time and torch the creme brulees right before serving.
You also need a good classic chocolate cake and vanilla cheesecake recipe.
Let's get to the recipe.
Jump to:
- 🥛Ingredients
- 📖 How do you make creme brulee?
- ⏲️Can you make creme brulee in advance?
- ♨️Can you makecrème brûlée without a torch?
- ✅Tips and Tricks
- More creme brulee recipes
🥛Ingredients
- Heavy cream.
- Vanilla Beans. If you must you can use real vanilla extract you just wont to have the intense and beautiful flecks you get from vanilla beans.
- Salt
- Granulated sugar
- Egg Yolks
- Kitchen Torch
Baking is a science and to really achieve the best results I highly recommend investing in a kitchen scale. This OXO Kitchen Scale is the one I use and is also the number one recommended kitchen scale by Cook's Illustrated. Think about it -what one person scoops into a "cup" is completely different from what someone else scoops!
📖 How do you make creme brulee?
Cut yourvanilla beanopen in half lengthwise then use the non-sharp side of a knife to scrape out thevanilla beans.
In a thick-bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat cook the heavy cream,salt, vanilla beans, and actual vanilla bean pod. Stirring constantly, cook until mixture comes to a slight simmer, just before a boil. Then take off the heat and place the lid on and let steep for 10 minutes. This helps the vanilla beans infuse the flavor into the cream.
Next, separate the egg yolks from the whites. I find it easiest to do this with a clean hand, let the egg white slip through your fingers into another container and save for another use. Like meringue cookies.
In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment or large bowl with an electric whisk beat the sugar and egg yolks until fully combined and much lighter in color, a pale yellow.
Remove vanilla bean pods from the cream mixture and slowly pour the cream into the egg mixture with the whisk attachment on at the lowest speed. Take your time doing this so the eggs do not curdle. Once all of the cream is added do not over mix, you don't want too much foam as it will affect the texture of the baked custard.
Make sure to scrape the bottom of the pot, all those vanilla beans are the flavor you need.
Once completely mixed pour the mixture through a fine mesh sieve in case there are any little bits of egg scrambled and any excess foam. This step helps ensure you have a smooth creme brulee.
Then evenly into ramekins.
Place the tray into the oven and pour boiling water from the kettle in theroasting pan, pour enough to come up halfway of the ramekins.
Bake for 35-42 minutes, you want the center of the creme brulee's to be set but a little bit of jiggle. I would start checking the creme brulees at 30 minutes. You do not want to risk overcooking them. Take out of the oven and place theroasting panon a wire rack. After five minutes remove the ramekins from theroasting panand let cool for 1 hour on the wire rack. Cover them with plastic wrap and place them in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours or overnight before serving.
When ready to serve the creme brulees sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sugar on top of each creme brulee swirling the ramekin so the sugar is spread evenly into a thin layer and using akitchen torch, torch the top of the creme brulee until the sugar has caramelized and hardened. Serve within 5 minutes. Truly one of my favorite desserts.
During the autumn season, I love to make my pumpkin creme brulee recipe.
⏲️Can you make creme brulee in advance?
Of course, that is the beauty of this recipe! I often make the recipe the day before, up to the chilling in the fridge part. Then right before serving sprinkle on your sugar and torch the top!
♨️Can you makecrème brûlée without a torch?
Yes, I prefer using a kitchen torch but you can turn your broiler on and put the creme brulees right underneath the oven's broiler and let cook for 2-3 minutes- watch it carefully as everyone's oven is different and you don't want the sugar completely burned black, just caramelized sugar on top of the creamy custard!
✅Tips and Tricks
- Use real vanilla beans, you could use vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract but I don't think you get the same flavor and taste.
- When making the custard be patient.
- When you pour the hot cream into the egg yolk mixture do it slowly, the slower the better. You do not want the eggs to cook or curdle.
- A water bath is necessary. I use a large roasting pan, add the ramekins, then pour the custard, and finally add the hot water right before going into the oven. Be very careful you don't want the water to splash into the custard.
- This Creme Brulee Recipe is a great make-ahead recipe. Perfect for your dinner party when you have 1000 other things to worry about.
- You can take the leftover vanilla bean pod that was used to steep in the cream and add the pod to a bag of sugar to make vanilla sugar.
- When "burning" the creme brulee make sure you put the full tablespoons and a half of sugar on top to ensure you have a nice crack when you break the creme brulee
More creme brulee recipes
- Coffee Creme Brulee
- Salted Caramel Creme Brulee
- Lemon Creme Brulee
- Chocolate Creme Brulee
- White Chocolate Creme Brulee
★★★★★ Please let me know if you make this recipe by leaving a star rating and comment below!
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Vanilla Bean Creme Brulee
5 Stars 4 Stars 3 Stars 2 Stars 1 Star
4.6 from 21 reviews
This Creme Brulee recipe is delicious, creamy, and the most perfect French dessert. Made with 5 basic ingredients, easily made ahead of time, and absolutely scrumptious your guests will love this creme brulee. Step-by-step photos help you make the Best Creme Brulee recipe.
- Total Time: 4 hours 57 minutes
- Yield: 5 (7oz) Ramekins 1x
Ingredients
Units Scale
- 20oz (2.5 Cups) Heavy Whipping Cream
- 1 vanilla beans pod cut in half and scraped
- ¼ Teaspoon Salt, optional
- 100 grams (½ Cup) Granulated/ Caster Sugar
- 6 Large Egg Yolks, at room temperature
- 7 ½ Tablespoons Granulated Sugar (1 ½ Tablespoons per creme brulee)
- Kitchen Torch
Instructions
- Cut your vanilla beanopen in half lengthwise then use the non-sharp side of a knife to scrape out the vanilla beans. In a thick-bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat cook the heavy cream, salt, vanilla bean, and actual vanilla bean pod. Stirring constantly, cook until mixture comes to a slight simmer just before a boil. Then take off heat and place lid on and let steep for 10 minutes.
- In a large roasting pan place 5 (7oz) ramekins inside and put the kettle on to boil and preheat oven to 325F/163C.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a whisk attachment or large bowl with a hand held electric whisk beat the sugar and egg yolks until fully combined and much lighter in color, a pale yellow. This will take a couple of minutes.
- Remove vanilla bean pod from the cream mixture and slowly pour the cream into the egg mixture with the whisk attachment on at the lowest speed. Take your time doing this so the eggs do not curdle.
- Once completely mixed pour the mixture evenly into ramekins. Place the pan on the oven rake and pour boiling water from the kettle in the roasting pan, pour enough to come up halfway of the ramekins.
- Bake for 32-42 minutes, you want the center of the creme brulee's to be set but have a little bit jiggle, if you want to use an instant-read thermometer the internal temperature should be 170F/77C. Take out of the oven and place the roasting pan on a wire rack. After five minutes remove the ramekins from the roasting pan and let cool for 1 hour on a wire rack. Place in the fridge for at least 4 hours or overnight before serving.
- When ready to serve sprinkle 1 tablespoon of sugar on top of each creme brulee swirling the ramekin so the sugar is spread evenly and using a kitchen torch, torch the top of the creme brulee until the sugar has caramelized and hardened. Serve immediately with fresh berries if desired.
Notes
- Some have complained of the salt in this recipe, I do not find the creme brulees salty at all but you can omit if you are worried it will affect the flavor.
- You can use smaller ramekins you will just need to reduce the cooking time.
- Author: Elizabeth Waterson I Confessions of a Baking Queen
- Prep Time: 15
- Chill Time: 4 Hours
- Cook Time: 42
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Bake
- Cuisine: French
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This recipe was originally published on June 10, 2014, as of October 2019 the text and photography have been updated. The recipe was originally written for 8 creme brulees but I have found most people don't want to make that many- if you do, here it is. The instructions are the same.
- 40oz (5 Cups) Heavy Whipping Cream
- 2vanilla beans- pods cut in half and scraped
- ½ Teaspoon Salt
- 200 Grams (1 Cup) Granulated Sugar
- 12 Large Egg Yolks
- 14 Tablespoons Granulated Sugar (2 Tablespoons per creme brulee)
White Chocolate Creme Brûlée
Lemon Creme Brulee
