Hot answers tagged custard
29
Follow these steps and watch very carefully...
Set your oven on Broil (high) and put your rack on the top shelf.
Let the oven get nice and hot (3-7 minutes).
Fill an oven safe dish with crushed ice and water and place your dishes into the ice/water bath.
The cold bath should keep the custard from cooking, but the sugar on top will heat till it ...
12
The old fashioned way was with an iron (not like today's steam iron -- a heavy chunk of metal at the end of a handle) you'd heat it up, and press it against the sugar to cook it. Of course this typically means having a chunk of metal that's just slightly smaller than your container.
Some of the high-pressure torch style lighters might also work or you can ...
11
Most creme brulees require baking, however after a little research I did find a recipe in "On Cooking" (Sarah Labensky/Michael Hause) that came from Chef Vincent Guerithault of Vincent on Camelback in Phoenix, AZ and his was similar in that it was not baked.
First, just making creme anglaise with heavy cream isn't going to do anything to let it set up into ...
7
Anything that doesn't survive the 150° C oven is not going to survive a 1500° C blow torch.
Gelatin has a melting point of about 35° C, maximum. It is a thermoreversible reaction, unlike the coagulation of eggs, which is thermoirreversible. Eggs set well in an oven, which is why they are used in so many baking recipes; gelatin does not, which is why it is ...
6
What you want is cream with 35%-40% milkfat, and no gelatine or other stabilizers for whipping. If you use a lighter cream, then it will not have the rich, creamy texture, and evenly thick consistency you seek. In fact, if you use a light enough cream, it will not thicken properly.
Now we enter the murky realm of regional naming differences, trying to ...
6
Here's what we did exactly once but it worked for us:
Cut a area out of foil the exact size that you want the topping to be
Spray one side with non-stick cooking spray
Mix some of the sugar topping and put it on the foil
Put the foil+topping on a cookie sheet and broil. Watch them closely -- this doesn't take long.
Bonus for our situation: this was for ...
5
Short answer: yes.
Long answer: The beauty of Mastering the Art of French Cooking is that all the recipes work. They're exhaustively detailed and painstaking, and godawful complicated compared to what modern chefs are used to working with, but they work, if you follow them to the letter. They're not for the faint of heart.
That being said, you might want ...
4
I think it all got too hot, but there might be other problems.
Did you mix the cornstarch in completely? Leaving undissolved cornstarch is a sure way to obtain 'blobs'.
Did you pour the hot milk onto the egg-mixture? You should do that very slowly and whisk vigorously (while trying to splash everything). If the eggs get too hot, they will coagulate.
Did ...
3
Frozen yogurt made with full fat yogurt is very creamy and full flavored. You might find that the eggs are unnecessary.
If you do do the custard watch you temperature carefully as yogurt curdles easily when it is heated. If you have a lot of fat in the yogurt then it will be resistant to curdling otherwise you can take out some insurance by mixing in a ...
3
Soft melt increases with fat and emulsifiers. Emulsifiers make the mouth feeling smooth and silky, but not as rich as fat. Firmness increases with proteins. Thickness increases with dry matter (a bit), proteins and additional binding agents.
I don't know which feeling you want to achieve, but here is a list of your relevant factors and what they do. The ...
2
You can use gelatin, but you then would have to change the process slightly. For a start, you wouldn't bake the custard. Instead you would essentially be making an egg-enriched panna cotta.
You would hydrate the gelatine with cold water, make your custard, then add the gelatine, mix and portion, then set in the fridge. How much gelatine you use depends on ...
2
The simplest icing is just water and powdered sugar. The sugar and egg white is called 'royal icing'. I'm guessing that the difference between your result and the store bought result is oven drying; Once you apply the icing on the pastry, you put it in a low heat oven for some time until it's dry (50ºC, 10').
2
Is the milk / cream too hot (/or cold) when you whisk it with the egg yolks? Do you return the mixture to the pan and cook it for long enough (slowly enough?)
Which recipe are you using?
EDIT
As roux mentioned in the comments to your question, the recipe you're using doesn't sound like it's up to the job.
I've used this recipe for Crème Anglaise with ...
2
In theory you could place the Crème brûlée under a very hot grill for a few seconds, but you are in danger of killing the custard too. Personally, if this is something you anticipate doing frequently, buy a torch. You don't need to spend load on a specialised kitchen torch, just go to your local DIY and get a standard propane plumbers torch.
2
As a counterpoint to daniel's answer - whom I'm sure, in all sincerity, makes perfect crème brûlées every time and I don't doubt that you can do the same by following his method - I have made a great many (albeit substantially less than five thousand) of them and have never heated anything except the water that goes into the bain-marie.
As long as you ...
2
This looks similar to recipes that I have used in the past that worked, although I haven't tried this specific one. You can heat it higher, but it becomes dangerous. Also: mix slowly rather than beating it over heat. You need to let the egg set.
More or less, the setting happens as the emulsion of cream and yolk cooks, the yolk thickens and sets up. More ...
1
Why not make a thick cream sauce, like an Alfredo or some such?
It's basically some cream with some white wine and maybe a little flour.
You can add some parmesan to it, if you want it a little thicker and yellower.
I'm not sure what would happen if you beat an egg into it as well, but it might be worth a chance.
I'd also consider using beetroot for the ...
1
Any air tight plastic container will do to keep smells out. I use either cheap, disposable plastic leftover containers, or used ice cream tubs that I saved from previous purchased ice cream.
As for the crystallization- The only way to prevent that is my having no air in contact with the ice cream at all. I don't know how to solve that completely. I avoid ...
1
You can use an electric stove that has a broil function. Put the rack on the top slot, turn on the broiler, wait until it is red hot and then add the cups of crème brûlée right under the element until you have a golden crust.
The crust will be thicker than if you used a torch. Nonetheless, i find the result perfectly fine.
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