12 November 2019

Crème caramel

I remember eating the dessert called a crème caramel in Paris restaurants and cafés back in the 1970s. I'd never had anything like that before. And the places I frequented were certainly not fancy restaurants — I didn't have that kind of income. Only years later did I find out that the Mexican flan is pretty much the same thing — an egg custard cooked in a baking dish, the inside of which has been coated with a dark caramel (melted, cooked sugar).


Since I seldom go to restaurants any more, I hadn't eaten a crème caramel in years. I decided to make one. It had been decades since I'd done so, I believe. Instead of cooking it in individual ramekins, I just made the crème caramel in a soufflé dish. We can cut wedges of it and drizzle on some of the liquid caramel sauce.

This is not a hard dessert to make — if you can get the caramel to work. My first attempt was a flop. I tried to make it in the microwave, directly in the soufflé dish I wanted to cook the custard in. But the caramel re-crystallized when I tried to thin it slightly by adding some hot water. I started over and made the second caramel in a pot on the stove, and then poured it into the soufflé dish and let it cool. That worked. It hardened pretty fast so I had to swirl it around quickly to cover the bottom and sides of the soufflé dish.


To make the crème or custard, bring half a liter of milk up to the boiling point on the stovetop or in the microwave (don't let it boil over!) Add some vanilla extract (in the U.S.) or a packet of sucre vanillé (in France). In a bowl, beat three eggs with 100 grams of sugar (half a U.S. cup – 8 tablespoons) until the sugar starts to dissolve (you can put in more or less sugar to taste). Then gradually pour the hot milk over the egg-sugar mixture, stirring it constantly with a whisk. Pour the crème into the soufflé dish that has hardened caramel on the bottom and sides.


Set the soufflé dish in a pan of hot water — enough water to come halfway up the sides of the soufflé dish. This is called a bain-marie in French — a water bath. Put the pan in the oven at 180ºC (350ºF) for about 30 minutes, until the custard has set up and is no longer liquid. Test it with a skewer or the blade of a knife to judge whether it's cooked through. Then take the dish out of the bain-marie and let it cool for 30 minutes before putting it in the fridge for a couple of hours, or even overnight, covered.

Finally, when the crème caramel is completely cold, run a sharp knife around the sides of the soufflé dish to loosen the custard up. Put a shallow bowl or pie plate over the top and quickly flip the dish over. If you're lucky (and we were), the custard will fall neatly into the bowl or pie plate, and the caramel, completely liquefied, will run off the top of the custard and fill in around sides of the dish. Cut into wedges and serve cold.

20 comments:

  1. It's killing me looking at this gorgeous creme caramel, before I go to bed. When I first read the post I thought "where's the crunchy top?" Then I realized there's a difference between crème caramel and crème brûlée.

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    1. To make crème brulée, the best tool is a small blowtorch (un chalumeau), because the hot flame is perfect for caramelizing sugar that is sprinkled on top of the cooked crème. I don't have a chalumeau. Poor me.

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    2. Some on the internet say that the broiler can be used as a substitute for the torch. Both desserts are equally wonderful, just different. I'm not sure I could have stopped at that one slice. ;-)

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  2. Wow! Just like Diogenes, I'm amazed you were that lucky not to break that beautiful crème caramel. Il n'y a de chance que pour la canaille! It was probably as delicious as it looks. Do I recognise this soufflé dish?

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    1. Cette citation de Courteline n'est plus prise en mauvaise part, mais sur le mode plaisant!

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    2. I didn't feel insulted. Somebody also said : Si infâmes que soient les canailles, elles ne le sont jamais autant que les honnêtes gens. Yes, it's your grandmother's souffé dish, no? Or your mother's? I use it all the time.

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    3. Yes, my grandmother's.

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    4. When I think about it, it is an antique since my brandmother might have gotten it in the early years of the nineteenth century!

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    5. LOL, Ken, it is twentieth century for this grandmother, not the other one! I meant the early 1900s.

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  3. Yummm! I always show my students Julia Child's video for this. It's fun watching the caramel swirl and coat the pan.

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    1. I'm not sure I've seen this video. Was it in The French Chef or some other series of hers?

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    2. I found a crème caramel segment in the Jacques & Julia series. I have it on DVDs that I've converted to MP4 format and keep on my hard disk.

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    3. Here are the ingredients and proportions for crème caramel that I see in Jacques & Julia: Cooking at home:

      Jacques Pépin's Crème Caramel recipe

      For the caramel:
      1 cup sugar
      3 Tbsp. water
      2 Tbsp. cognac or rum (optional)

      For the custard:
      2 cups milk
      1 cup half-and-half
      vanilla to taste
      5 large eggs
      1 egg yolk
      ¼ to ½ cup sugar

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  4. I'm going to try it for our friends who are coming this weekend. I will cook the topping on the stove in my iron skillet.

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    1. Do you have, or can you get Jacques Pépin and Julia Child Cooking at Home, either on DVD or by download? The episode on Creamy Desserts includes a segment on making crème caramel.

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  5. It is known as "fla" (with a tilde over the a) in Brazil, a standard dish and made with a variety of ingredients (such as corn flour). It must be originally from Portugal but probably influenced by French practice. Roderick

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    1. Funny, the French caramel custard doesn't include any flour at all, not even corn flour.

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    2. It seems to me what the Brazilians call flã, might just be what in France we call flan. It has the same ingredients as the crème caramel but with an addition of corn flour, just as you say.

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    3. Here's a recipe for flã Brazilian-style. This particular one doesn't have any flour or corn starch in it.

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