This is my first attempt at Crème Brûlée. I've never made it mostly because I'm not a huge custard eater - being non-compatible with milk and all. But I had leftover chocolate dough from the Lemon Tarts, and this was the other recipe in the book that used chocolate shells, so...
I baked the shells and I'm getting a little better with finessing the dough into the molds without overlap. I also need to use less flour when rolling them out so I don't get the little bubbles in the texture. I got to go to Surfas and buy a torch (whee! more kitchen toys!) to torch the sugary tops.
The custard came out beautifully and didn't turn into scrambled eggs (I was warned about them doing that). I enjoyed smelling the Tahitian vanilla bean as it cooked too :) I totally forgot to take the shells out of the molds before I poured the filling. Oops. Good thing I buttered the molds well; after they were set I was able to invert them and pop them right out! So far so good.
Now's when I blow it. I tried to carmelize the top and just totally screwed them up. They melted! And I didn't get a good surface. I think the heat was too low. I did it in two layers of sugars just like the directions said; one layer of sugar, melt. Then the second layer of sugar to bubble and caramelize. Nope. It took way too long and I got burn marks on my edges and unset custard underneath. We ate two anyway (they tasted fine!) and popped two back in the fridge to set overnight. Which wasn't ideal, but it worked. If anyone has any tips on caramelizing I'd be very happy to hear them.
(Recipe from "Book of Tarts" by Maury Rubin)
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