Cardamom Orange Crème Brûlée (Gluten Free)
Suble and delicately flavored, with honey used for most of the sweetener. These caramelized sugar topped creamy custards will make your meal complete!
Equipment
- 1 13 x 9 "casserole dish or tray
Ingredients
- 6 large egg yolks
- ½ teaspoon fine salt
- ½ cup honey
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 1¾ cups heavy cream
- ½ cup whole milk
- ½ teaspoon Spicely Organics Ground Cardamom gf, or other gf cardamom
- 2 teaspoons orange zest
- 1 teaspoon Nielsen-Massey Vanilla or Vanilla Bean Paste or other gf vanilla
- 2 tbsp Cointreau liqueur gf, optional
- 2 ½-3 tbsp super fine sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 300℉. Boil water for the casserole dish. Set a tea towel at the bottom of the dish. Set the ramekins or crème brûlée dishes inside without touching each other.
- Whisk the egg yolks and the salt in a small bowl. Set aside.
- In a medium saucepan, add the honey, brown sugar, cream, milk, cardamom, orange zest, vanilla, and Cointreau. Stir over medium low heat. Once the honey is melted increase the temperature to medium high. Let the mixture heat until just starting to bubble on the sides of the pan. Do not boil.
- Turn the heat off. Add in a steady stream the cream mixture into the egg mixture bowl, whisking continually with your free hand. Strain the mixture through a sieve back into your saucepan or a bowl.
- Ladle cream mixture about 2/3 - 3/4 full, into the dishes set in your baking tray. Pour boiling water from the kettle around the ramekins, until the water is halfway up the dishes. Gently place into the oven.
- Bake for 32-40 minutes or until just set. They should have a tiny jiggle when the dish is moved. Ramekins will take longer than flatter crème brûlée dishes. Remove the baking pan from the oven, to a cooling rack.
- Cool on rack until just cool to touch. Cover with cellophane, or place in a large plastic container covered, for 2-3 hours minimum and up to 2 days.
- Remove from the refrigerator a few minutes before serving. Sprinkle each evenly with granulated sugar (about 1-1 ½ teaspoons for each). With a kitchen torch, brown the sugar holding the torch about 1 - 2 inches from the top of custard. Torch until evenly browned and caramelized and as quickly as possible to not heat the custard.
Notes
Note:
Turn off torch as soon as caramelization is complete to not burn it or heat the custard. You want the custard to remain as cold as possible.
Using super fine sugar will make the carmelization process much easier. Coarser sugar is much more difficult to torch evenly.