Pressure Cooking Makes Single Serving Creme Brulee A Thing




Sometimes I don't want to make six servings of creme brulee because, frankly, I don't want to find myself eating the three leftover ramekins the next day when I am home alone and they are in the fridge, singing their siren song. I have often dreamt of being able to make just one or two perfect little creme brulees so that the kid could could have one after dinner and then another for breakfast because all children benefit from a breakfast of leftover pie, cake or custard from time to time.


There is no way I was going to preheat the oven, get a water bath together and go through all those hoops just to make one little ramekin but that was before my Instant Pot. With a pressure cooker, making one serving suddenly became not only possible but necessary!

The Kid and I did a day of taste testing until we decided that this version is the one we liked the best. Two eggs made it too rich and dense, if that is at all possible and we both agreed that this version resulted in a perfectly creamy, custardy little pot of goodness. I also discovered that scalding the cream made so little difference, it doesn't make sense to take that extra step so it's even easier than it seems. Just whisk the sugar and egg yolk together before whipping in the cream and vanilla and pour in into the ramekin. DONE.

Creme brulee used to be a special occasion indulgence that I could only make when I had lots of time during the day - think more birthday cake than a bowl of ice cream. Now, I can take that one lonely, single egg left from the carton and surprise him with his very own dessert any day of the week and you can too.

Single Serving Creme Brulee


1 large egg yolk
2 tbls sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/3 cup heavy cream

beat 1 tbls of the sugar and egg yolk together with a small whisk until the yolk is pale yellow. Whisk in the cream and vanilla and pour into a 4 oz ramekin.

Put 1 cup of water in the pot and set the ramekin on the trivet. Cook at HP for 9 minutes and let it NPR for 6 minutes before releasing the steam and removing the lid. Take the ramekin out and let it cool on the counter til room temp and then chill it in the fridge for at least 4 hours or overnight.

When it's time to eat, take the creme brulee out of the fridge, put the second tbls of sugar on the surface of the custard and get out your blow torch. Torch the sugar until it bubbles and browns and turns into a hard, caramel crust. Let it cool a bit and then dig in.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Vietnamese Chicken Meatballs

Image
I have had a serious craving for bun - if you eat Vietnamese food, you know what I'm talking about. A bowl with crisp, shredded romaine lettuce, cold rice noodles, lots of chopped dry roasted peanuts, fresh mint and cilantro, shredded carrots, cucumbers and some sort of sticky, sweet bbq meat that you pour nuoc chom over and then scarf it all down like a maniac because it's so refreshingly delicious that you can't stand it?? Okay, if you don't eat Vietnamese food and don't know what I'm talking about, go find some. Honestly. So my quest today was to make some but I didn't feel like tackling the bbq pork today but The Kid loves meatballs so I thought I would whip up some sort of Vietnamese meatballs out of ground chicken and do a kind of   Bun Ga Nuong . The only thing I was worried about was the sticky, caramelized glaze on the outside when I found this recipe on the Food and Wine web site.  It's from a cook book called Small Bites by Jennifer J...
Read more

Travel Diary : Toronto to Nova Scotia 2021- First Stop, Montreal

Image
 Hello my lovlelies! The family is on our first vacation in almost two years and it's a covid friendly affair. Not ready for international travel, airports and sharing air for 8 hours, we threw our Segway Ninebot Max scooters on the roof of the car and headed east. We stopped in Montreal for the first night, thinking we would just get up early and continue on our way. HAH who is going to bitch about burrata and rose outdoors? Like that was going to happen. I booked us into the brand, spanking new Hotel St Thomas on Sherbrooke, we dropped all of our crap into the ginormous room and hit the road on the scooters. It was a Monday night, which means just about any restaurant I would want to visit is closed so we did the only thing you can do in on a Monday.... we went to Old Montreal and grabbed an outdoor table at Bevo Bar and had a lovely bottle of Rose, some pizza and apps, perfect after a long day of driving. Once we woke up, we all knew we wanted to stay another night so I took ca...
Read more

Sous Vide Pork Souvlaki

Image
I love the idea of pork souvlaki. I love the flavours, I love the charcoal flavour that the grill imparts and I love any meat that gets dipped in lots of tzatziki. What I don't love is dry, leathery meat and, unfortunately, that is almost always the case when people try to cook small chunks of lean meat over the grill. That's where sous vide comes in. I just made my regular marinade and instead of cutting the pork into bite sized pieces, I cut my pork tenderloins into 1" slices and then after 24 hours of soaking in the fridge, I sous vide them before cutting some of the disks into chunks and skewering them (I left half of them as is and grilled the medallions, which worked even better) right before we threw them on the grill for a quick char. I finally have my perfect pork souvlaki - tender, moist (OH MY GOD THAT HORRIBLE WORD AGAIN) and with all the wonderful souvlaki flavours but without the dry, overcooked bits that are almost unavoidable when you grill them fro...
Read more