Crème Brûlée with Caramelized Brown Sugar

 Easy Peasy Fancy Pants Dessert

This recipe sounds very fancy pants indeed.  Crème brûlée
But is it not essentially just pudding?  Pudding with some sugar on top.  Sugar that you get to torch.  Yes, fire is involved.  And I will be the one holding a lit torch to this dessert.  <Insert power crazy maniacal laugh here.>  No worries, there is a fire extinguisher in the kitchen.  Hubbie will be on standby (and standing close).  He will also be the one lighting the torch for me.  I'm a scaredy cat.

There really isn't much to do for this recipe.  Therefore, this post is going to be short and sweet.  Yes, yes, just like me.  (Don't let the lit torch in my hand scare you away...unless I'm also laughing maniacally...and the drapes are on fire...and the cats are looking at me in a 'oh I knew this day was coming' sort of way...and the hubbie is calling 911.)  Sorry, what were we talking about?

Easy Peasy.  There are only 6 ingredients in total.

Vanilla bean gets split and the seeds get scraped out.  This one is full of yummy vanilla goodness.










The seeds and the split pod all get put into the cream.  Then the heat gets turned on.  Yes, the heat it on.

This mixture is heated up to just below boiling, at which point the heat it turned off (sorry Glenn Frey) and the mixture then steeps for 10 minutes.









This gives me time to whisk the egg yolks with the sugar and salt.

Also gave me time to find enough ramekins to make these desserts.  Please note: Only four ramekins are required.  I hunted for two more, because I have this thing about not properly reading recipes and instructions.  Sigh.

The cream mixture gets slowly poured and stirred into egg yolk mixture.  Look at all those vanilla seeds!  I could seriously just drink the cream mixture.  In fact, I think it would make a yummy White Russian.

Clearly, I stayed the course and am going through with the recipe.  But damn, a White Russsian would have been good!
The mixture just needs to be strained before it is poured into the four (not six) ramekins.

Four ramekins ready to be put in the oven.  The other two are just sitting there looking pretty, but ready to go on at moment's notice, should they be needed.  Yes, my ramekins have understudies.

Boiling water gets carefully poured into the pan before these are put into the oven...which surprisingly (shouldn't have been surprised) makes the pan really hot.
 Owwww!  Moving the pan to a baking sheet.






These baked for 40 minutes.

Ramekins need to cool to room temperature, before being put in the fridge...to become super cool (and super fly).









Now comes the fun part. (Everyone stand clear.)  Hubbie has turned the torch on for me. Muahahaha!!

 Dark brown sugar gets sprinkled on them.











Then they get torched.

And now for an action shot (love the camera on my phone)! All the pics were actually taken with my phone for this post. (Hubbie took the torch shots.)

Very creamy...might have used the torch on it for too long.  But the flavour is lovely.  The only disappointment, is that the vanilla beans seem to have sunk to the bottom of the dish.  What's up with that??

To get the recipe and see how everyone else did, go here.

#didn't burn the house down, #still want a White Russian