Skip to main content

Oolong Earl Grey Crème Brûlée

Let's be real here. Valentine's Day is just one big ol' excuse to luxuriate in sensual decadence. I 1000% support this, for the record. Taking a time out to play and enjoy a treat is a wonderful gift to give yourself. For some people this looks like taking a walk in the fresh air or going to the movies. For others, ballroom dancing or binging crappy TV shows in their jammies. For myself personally, this looks like baking five million delicious desserts and sharing them with my friends and family.

My fifteen years as a professional chef made for a brain full of wild recipe ideas, and I hope you all benefit from them in tasty ways. This recipe is one of my favorite creations to date, with rich texture and palpatation-inducing flavor. From the crack of the burnt sugar to the last or the cream coating your tongue, I promise you'll be hooked.



Oolong Earl Grey Crème Brûlée

Recipe time: 1 hr active cooking, 2 hr chill
Serves: 4
You will need:
  • 2 cups heavy whipping cream
  • 4 Tablespoons Oolong Earl Grey
  • 1/8 teaspoons salt
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar 
  • 1/8 cup raw sugar (aka demerara sugar) 

Process:
  1. Preheat your oven to 350°F and gather your materials. In addition to the ingredients above, you will need one small mixing bowl, one small saucepan, four 6 oz. ramekins and one deep baking dish that can hold the ramekins. A pastry torch is very helpful, but if you are lacking a torch when you arrive at the final step, pop the brûlées under the broiler for about 5 minutes instead.
  2. Heat heavy cream, Oolong Earl Grey and salt in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, stirring frequently until hot (don't let it boil, though!), then remove from heat and strain through a mesh sieve to remove tea leaves. Pour the leafless hot cream back into the saucepan, stir in vanilla and set aside.
  3. In a separate bowl, beat egg yolks and sugar together until creamy. Mix about a quarter of your hot cream into the egg mixture and beat well, then pour the whole eggy mess back into the saucepan of hot cream and stir until well mixed.
  4. Pour hot custard into four 6 oz ramekins and set side by side in a deep baking dish.
  5. Fill the baking dish with hot water until the water level is about halfway up the side of the ramekins. Bake for 45 minutes, or until the custard just slightly jiggles when shaken.
  6. Chill at least 2 hours, or up to 5 days. When ready to serve, sprinkle each with 1 teaspoon of raw sugar and torch the heck outta the tops until they bubble and turn dark amber verging on black. Serve within the hour and enjoy!

How sexy is that?

Whether you share your desserts with a lover, a group of friends, or keep them all for yourself, I invite you to really savor and enjoy the creamy, rich, decadent goodness. I don't think you'll be disappointed!

After all, as Donna says...


<3, Friday

P.S. Get that Oolong Earl at a 15% discount with coupon code "OolongLove" through 2/15/20!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Indigenous Sips: Pacific Madrone

Pacific Northwest local red-barked beauty Pacific Madrone, aka Arbutus Menziesii , is a sight to behold for sure. The rich hue and dramatically peeling bark, the curve of its sturdy branches and sheen of its verdant waxy leaves are all peak hiking aesthetic, but did you know this tree has long been a multipurpose source of healing tincture and tea? Various tribes of the west coast, ranging from California up through British Columbia, make use of Madrone bark and berries. Extracted as a tincture or bundled and bruised for a poultice, this plant can be used topically to treat minor wounds and sores. Brewed as a tea, the light-bodied brew has notes of cinnamon, foresty fungus and wood smoke and is used to help a stomachache or as a cold medicine. This tree serves as a very renewable source of bark, leaf and berry and can be harvested without damaging the tree. Madrones will naturally shed their leaf every two years and their bark each summer. When you approach a Madrone in midsumme
1 comment
Read more

Synesthesia And Blending As Sensory Art

I am frequently asked how I get ideas for my blends. Where does my inspiration come from? Which comes first, the blend or its name? I'm proud of how original my blends are, and how different from blends you'll find by any other company. This is largely due to the fact that I have synesthesia (meaning my senses are cross-wired and abstract concepts, personalities, colors, weather, etc. all translate to me as flavor). My dominant forms are referred to as "lexical-gustatory," "auditory-tactile," and "mirror touch." It's fascinating stuff for sure, and has made my life and relationships more complicated. On the flip side, I have discovered a practical use for my brain-strangeness! Like many synesthetes before me (Jimi Hendrix, Tori Amos, Richard Feynman, Vladimir Nabokov, etc.), I've translated my particular brand of strange into a career. Synesthesia salad. credit: jessicahagy.info/ My personal experience with synesthesia leads me
8 comments
Read more

Six True Types of Tea

We get asked a LOT what the difference is between white tea and black tea, herbal tea and green tea, and so on. The world of tea is mysterious and a lot of you want to learn more, so let's start with the basics! True tea comes from the Camellia Sinensis plant. Always. Any infusion made from the leaf, stem, root or whatever other part of any other plant falls into the "tisane" category, also known as "herbal tea." Those are a whole tasty world absolutely worth your time and attention, but today we're focusing on true teas.   There are six basic types of true tea, delineated by the level of oxidation allowed to occur in the leaf during processing. After picking, tea leaves frequently go through a process of bruising, withering, heating, and drying. (I say frequently because the world of tea is so vast and varied, every facet of the end product is up for flux. How much caffeine? What does it taste like? Is it smooth or brash? The answer is always "it
7 comments
Read more