Recipe for Easy Creme Brulee – No Torch

Creme brulee is a dish that sounds fancy but is basic. The hardest part of making creme brulee is the brulee part. This is typically done with a kitchen torch, but a recipe for easy creme brulee doesn’t require a torch.

This recipe for easy creme brulee removes the torch from the process, making it a quick and easy dessert for any occasion. What is creme brulee? Translating it directly, we get burnt cream.

However, the dessert is slightly more than just cream that has been burnt. In fact, the cream isn’t burnt at all. Instead, the cream is made into a custard with egg yolks, and a thin layer of sugar is burnt on top of the custard with a blow torch.

Burning that sugar caramelizes it, making it a crispy layer of caramel goodness. The crispy sugar topping adds a fantastic texture to the creamy custard in this classic dessert. Making creme brulee at home for the first time feels daunting.

However, it is not the custard that is the problem; the crunchy caramelized sugar poses the biggest issue. The recipe itself is made up of simple ingredients placed into individual ramekins, meaning we just need to find a way to make the brulee part easier.

We can use this easy creme brûlée as one of the easiest desserts for Valentine’s Day or any special occasion. The rich vanilla custard base will pair nicely with just about any menu, as well.

We just need to figure out that cooking process problem so the recipe is more accessible to home cooks.

Easy Crème Brûlée Recipe Ingredients

• Heavy Cream: Every custard starts with a heavy cream base. This base is going to serve multiple purposes. We will get both flavor and texture from the heavy cream. In fact, the custard mixture relies almost entirely on heavy cream for the texture.
• Vanilla Extract: Vanilla extract is going to help give us more flavor, and any vanilla extract will do. However, we can elevate the dish by using a real vanilla bean in the recipe. Vanilla extra is simply vanilla bean soaked in vodka. That’s right, authentic, pure vanilla extract usually has an alcohol content of about 35%. Most of the alcohol is cooked off when used, but it starts as vanilla vodka. 
• Egg Yolks: Yolks are what give us the richness in the custard. Combined with the vanilla extract, we get a rich vanilla flavor. They do a bit of lifting on the texture, but we mostly want it to stabilize the custard and add as much richness as possible. There is little room for elevating with the yolks, but the more orange, the better.
• Refined White Granulated Sugar: The custard would be quite the opposite of a dessert without sugar. This sugar should be regular old white sugar. Some places may use regular sugar for the topping as well, but we won’t be doing that. After all, we want our recipe for easy creme brulee without a torch to be more faithful to the original.
• Demerara Sugar: Here is where the magic happens. We want to use demerara sugar for the burnt-sugar crust because it tastes richer. We also prefer this sugar because it browns quite nicely. 
• Salt: Every cook will tell you that a dish without seasoning is not a dish at all. The salt will help elevate all of the flavors. We just need to be careful with how much salt we use; after all, we aren’t making salted caramel creme brulee. Not yet!

No Torch Creme Brulee

The most exciting aspect of making this recipe for easy creme brulee is the lack of a torch. Using a torch is the classic way of making creme brulee. However, we don’t all have a kitchen torch lying around, and they require a light and sturdy hand.

Hold the torch too close, and you will melt the custard underneath the sugar. Hold it too far away, and you’ll just waste gas. Then, there is the idea of getting sugar on the rim of the ramekins.

A fancy restaurant will care more about the sides of the ramekins, but we don’t have to at home. Instead, we will be using our oven broiler instead of a torch. This classic French dessert just became a whole lot easier to make, even with the burnt sugar on top of the rich custard base. 

What is The Secret of Creme Brulee?

The secret to this recipe for easy creme brulee, or any creme brulee recipe, is the hot water bath or bain-marie. A bain-marie is a form of cooking something in a bath of water in the oven. Sounds complicated, but it isn’t at all.

It just means to place the ramekins of egg yolk mixture into a baking dish half filled with water. The water helps distribute the heat all around the custard and prevents a grainy scrambled egg result.

We also want to keep in mind that these desserts can be made slightly ahead of time. The custard can sit in the shallow ramekins for up to three days. That means we can make the custard, complete the bake time, and then set them in the fridge until we are ready to add the sugar coating and broil them.

This could easily become one of your favorite easy dessert recipes, thanks to this fact.

​Recipe for Easy Creme Brulee – No Torch

Mix your heavy cream, salt, and vanilla extract in a saucepan and bring it up to a simmer and let it steep for about 5 minutes.

Whisk in your heated cream in your mixing bowl slowly and in small increments. (Adding too much at once will cause the yolks to scramble).

Add mixture into ramekins and place them in a water bath in a baking dish.

Bake at 325 F for 40 minutes. When done, the edges should be set while the middle is wiggly like gelatine.

Chill the custard and let it set overnight.

Set the custards out at room temperature while you preheat your oven for broiling.

Once the broiler is nice and hot, sprinkle a thin layer of Demerara sugar over the top of your custard.

Place in the broiler for about 2 mins.

Let creme brulee sit for a minute to allow the sugar to cool and harden to get that satisfying crack with a spoon.

Enjoy!

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