April 13, 2009 - Custards (stirred and baked) and caramel

Week 3! It's amazing how quickly time is passing by. Tonight's dinner was by far the best yet. For the first time, we ventured away from the standard green salad and had two salads -- Nicoise and Pear, Walnut and Gorgonzola, followed by Fettuccine Alfredo and Spaghetti with Sauce Basquaise. It was all so delicious I had to force myself to stop eating to save room for all the custard we would be making. 

For those of you who are curious, all custards are made with:

1. whole eggs and/or egg yolks
2. milk and/or cream
3. sugar

The texture and richness of the custard is determined by the use of eggs vs yolks and milk vs. cream. The scale of richness goes from Creme Caramel (flan) on the lighter side, to Pot de Creme in the middle, to Creme Brulee on the very rich end. We began by making Creme Anglaise, which is both a sauce and the base for ice cream. We poured all of our vanilla Anglaise into one bucket, which was cooled, and then churned into ice cream today for us to use tomorrow. Anyone who has had home made ice cream before knows that this is pretty exciting, and I'll have a full report on the deliciousness.

I was assigned the flan -- not my favorite dish but interesting to make. First, a caramel is prepared and poured into the warm baking dish, then the custard is prepared and poured over the caramel. When removed from the dish, the caramel creates the golden topping and sauce on top of the custard. Others made vanilla, chocolate, and coffee pot de creme and creme brulee. Fortunately, there were enough creme brulees prepared for everyone to have a chance carmelizing the tops with the torch...power tools + baked goods = too much fun. A torch for my home usage is now the number 1 item on my shopping list and you bet I'll be torching everything for months to come.

While waiting for our custards to bake, we made some more caramel and played around with it making shapes. Mine pretty much looked like a 3rd grader made them, but there were some natural caramel masters in the class! We learned how to make caramel nests, pulled caramel, spirals, squiggles, swirls, zig zags, etc etc. I'm also planning to practice this a lot at home....so anyone I bake for can expect some sort of torched aspect and a caramel garnish until I've mastered both. 

I'm not a coffee drinker, but I love coffee flavored things, and the pot de creme did not disappoint, so enjoy!

The Delicious Recipe of the Day: Pots De Creme Javannaise

(from Mary Risley)

• 1/2 cup sugar
• 2 Tbsp water
• 1 2/3 cups light cream (half and half)
• 1 oz semisweet chocolate
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 5 egg yolks, plus one whole egg
• 2 Tbsp instant espresso
• 1/3 cup heavy cream
• 6 candy coffee beans
• salt

In a small saucepan, dissolve 1/4 cup sugar is 2 Tbsp water over low heat. Increase the heat to moderately high and cook the sugar until it is a light caramel. Add the light cream, heated, the rest of the sugar, the semisweet chocolate cut in bits, the espresso and the vanilla. Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring until it is combined. 

In a bowl, beat the egg yolks and the whole egg lightly with a whisk, pour in the cream mixture in a stream. Add a few grains of salt. Pour this through  a fine sieve into six one-third cup pots de creme of ramekins and skim off any remaining froth. Cover with lids or foil, put in a small baking pan, carefully fill the pan with enough hot water to come halfway up the sides. Bake in a preheated 325 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until they are just set. Remove from water, let cool uncovered, then chill covered. Serve decorated with rosettes of whipped cream and candy coffee beans.