Creme Brulle: pre-heating vs not

[email hidden] (MC) wrote in news:289a46d0.0405081750.202d501
@posting.google.com:

Quoted message said:

I have always heated the cream and almost all recipes call
for this prior to baking. I saw the chef on the Surreal
Gourmet skip this step and mix the eggs, creme, etc and
pour directly into the ramekins. Does anyone know what
difference this makes? Does it just take longer to cook?

Cook's Illustrated recently explored this and determined
that unheated cream yielded the best finished texture of
the custard. Their final recommendation was to heat half
the cream in order to more easily dissolve the sugar and to
extract the most flavor from a split vanilla bean in the
shortest time. IIRC, the cream, sugar and vanilla bean were
allowed to rest for about half an hour, then combined with
the remaining cold cream and egg yolks. Their recipe
sounded quite good, and you should be able to find it on
their website.

Wayne

"Wayne" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:

[email hidden] (MC) wrote in
news:289a46d0.0405081750.202d501 @posting.google.com:

Quoted message said:

I have always heated the cream and almost all recipes
call for this prior to baking. I saw the chef on the
Surreal Gourmet skip this step and mix the eggs, creme,
etc and pour directly into the ramekins. Does anyone
know what difference this makes? Does it just take
longer to cook?

What is worth doing is to make the caramel and pour it out
to set on an oiled baking tray. Once hard it can then be put
through a food processor and ground down again. This can be
kept for months in an air tight container. When it is
sprinkled on top of the crème brulle it will immediately
turn back to caramel when melted. I usually do this with a
blow torch. Diane