Oh dear. I was SO excited for this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe. SO excited. Crème brûlée – our absolute favourite dessert. The one we have to order in every restaurant we can find it in when we are travelling in France. I’ve made this before, with much success. I had no reason to doubt that Dorie’s recipe would be a smashing success so I invited people over for a “blog food dinner” (where they get to eat an odd assortment of food I need to cook for blog posts) and this was to be the pièce de résistance.

Sadly, this was not meant to be. I mean, it looked ok. And tasted wonderful.

But it never set.  This recipe calls for cooking them at a very low temperature (200˚F) for 50-60 minutes without using a waterbath. And even after 1 hour and 10 minutes, it never set. Well at least not in the dishes I have used with much success before.  In thicker ramekins, with a tiny amount of the mix, it set ok – and I only used those because I had a tiny bit of leftover mix but they were way too tall to be proper crème brûlée dishes.  But in the proper, shallow dishes I have used before (with a higher temperature and a water bath), these never set. Even after over a day in the fridge. Even after being in the freezer. Even after re-cooking them (I KNOW – so wrong but I was desperate). So, we had dessert soup.

I did some research and found a lot of people in the Tuesdays with Dorie baking group had had some issues with this recipe as well (of course I did this after I had already made the dish) – I wish I had read that before I made this.  Next time? I would definitely cook them at a higher heat. Failing that, I might try adding a water bath.  I mean these were tasty enough. Just soupy

(sorry Dorie. I feel bad…. but hey, in 61 weeks, one recipe that didn’t work out is ok.  Yes people 61 weeks. I have not missed one!)

Want to join in the fun? Join French Fridays with Dorie here.

French Fridays with Dorie participants do not publish the recipes on our blogs, rather, we prefer if you purchase Around My French Table for yourselves (trust me, you definitely want this book!) which you can do here on Amazon or Amazon Canada. Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository.  Go on, treat yourself and join us in 2012!

Crème brulée is one of my favorite desserts to order in a restaurant. It had never occurred to me that I could make it at home. Crème brulée was this week’s assignment for French Fridays with Dorie, and, so, the challenge was on.

I’d never made custard before. First, you heat the cream and milk. I chose to do this in the microwave, but lacking experience, I think I should have done it on top of the stove. I didn’t want the milk to boil over, but I wasn’t sure how long it would take. It was hard to see through the glass of the microwave, so I would have been better off just using a pot on the stovetop — much easier to watch.

Then, you whisk together egg yolks and sugar, and gradually add the hot milk until it’s all combined. My custard was overly foamy, even after a lot of rapping the container on the counter, so I skimmed off the layer of foam.

For a new twist on crème brulée, Dorie has you spread a spoonful of jam on the bottom of each dish. I had both raspberry and strawberry jams that I made this summer, so I made 3 with each flavor.

I didn’t have the exactly right-sized dishes for the crème brulée, but used what I had. None of my dishes were quite as wide as the 4 inches suggested, so my custards took longer to cook. Rather than spending an hour in a low oven, my custards needed more like 90 minutes to set. Then, after cooling, the crèmes spent the night in the refrigerator.

The final step, the bruléeing, called for family fun. For some reason, Howard had a butane torch in the basement, so I called on him to conduct the caramelization step. I don’t know whether I layered the sugar on too thick. Initially, the sugar flamed up like roasted marshmallows do, leaving little burnt spots on top. The sugar wasn’t really melting. We watched a couple of YouTube videos to see how it’s done. It worked better when he held the flame closer and moved the flame around faster.

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