Easy Creme Brulee
This truly is an easy creme brulee! It's got all the basic brulee ingredients: heavy cream, egg, sugar and vanilla. If you don't have a cooking torch you can easily put this under the broiler to get the traditional creme brulee crunchy topping.
5 stars - 94 reviews
ready in: over 5 hrs
serves/makes: 4
photo by: CDKitchen Staff
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ingredients
2 cups heavy cream
5 egg yolks
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup light brown sugar (or as needed)
directions
Preheat oven to 275 degrees F.
Whisk the cream, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla extract together in a bowl. Mix it all up until it gets nice and creamy. Pour this mixture into 7 ounce sized ramekins (those little ceramic dishes). I suppose you could pour it all into one smallish casserole dish too. Place the ramekins in a baking pan. Fill the baking pan with hot water, about halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Place the pan with the ramekins in the oven for 45 minutes to an hour or so. After 45 minutes or so check them every ten minutes. You'll know they're done when you can stick a knife in one and it comes out clean. Remove the ramekins from the baking pan, set them on the counter, and let them cool for 15 minutes or so.
Then put them in the refrigerator and let them chill overnight.
Sprinkle a thin layer of the light brown sugar on the top of each. Make sure it's a THIN layer, but also make sure it completely covers the custard. Now torch it! Or, if you don't have a torch, you can supposedly put them under the broiler for a minute or so. I haven't tried this. [I got my wife one of those little kitchen torches for Christmas at Williams-Sonoma for about 25 bucks. It's fun!] The point is, you need to caramelize (melt and let harden) the sugar.
Anyway, that's it. They came out just right the first time. Easy. And they tasted GREAT. The consistency was perfect. Enjoy!
COOK'S NOTES:
I've tried many recipes. All ended in yuckness. Granted, I'm no master chef. I'm sure those other recipes work fine if you really know what you're doing. But I don't want to have to go to culinary school. I just want a creme brulee.
So I'm talking to my mother on the phone tonight, as I'm about to embark on another creme brulee experiment, and she mentions, "Oh, well, your Aunt Carol makes a great creme brulee; it's always good."
So I called up Aunt Carol, got the recipe, gave it a shot, and what do you know? Perfect. So unless you're a master chef, return that double-boiler, forget about scalding the cream, don't fret about scrambling your eggs. Just follow this easy recipe for a creamy, great-tasting creme brulee
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reviews
Guest: midget7134
Creme Brulee is the English version for flan. Try adding melt sugar in the ramekin first and then bake normal. Umm
Guest: EC
this recipe is amazing!!! im only 17 n i did it with my mom for the first time n it was d best creme brulee i hav ever ate n i LOVE creme brulee... THANK U for posting d recipe. it is truly easy...
mayhem000
I have made this recipe twice now and each time everyone has LOVED it! Of course there are the critics who say they can taste that I didn't use ACTUAL vanilla bean but they still loved it. I ended up using one large Ramekin for the whole dish so the cooking time was extended to 1 hr 5 mins to 1 hr 15 mins but that was my own fault. But I also raised the temperature to 300F. All together, fantastic recipe! Thank you so much!
Guest: peacock
My wife and I both like Creme Brulee. Every year for our anniversary I make a nice prime rib roast and creme brulee. I have always used a recipe requiring multiple steps, double boiler systems...etc. This recipe is not only very easy to make, but it's pretty darn good too. I think this recipe is a bit heavy on the vanilla flavor, but it's still very good as is. In the past I have used turbinado sugar instead of the light brown sugar. I used a 50-50 mix this time and I honestly didn't notice much of a difference. I think I'll just use the light brown sugar in the future. it seems like we always have some of that in the house for ma... read more
Guest: Steve
Great stuff. I did change some things after reading some of the other suggestions. Combined cream, sugar, and vanilla in a microwavable bowl, mixed together,and heated for 2 minutes. Beat egg yolks until smooth, and stirred into the creme mixture. Poured into ramekins.Heated water in a pot, not quite to the boiling point, then poured into baking pan half way up side of ramikins. Preheated oven to 325, and cooked at 325 for 45 minutes. Came out Perfect.
Guest: Paul0824
This recipe tastes great, but i can't ever get the broiling right. I now use a flambe kit & it comes out perfect every time. No torching & great aromas
Guest: krismcd
This was my very first time making creme brulee and I have to say this is an excellent easy recipe! As I type my 2nd batch is in the oven that's how good it is! I plan on making this as a Thanksgiving desert b/c of the ease and prep ahead of time. I did raise the oven temp ( US) to 315 and it took @ 60-70 min based on the sizes of the containers a few I had were larger than the rest so those took a few min longer. You can clearly see it set from the outside rim inward and although my fork was never 100% clean clean when done they came out fine! I did place all containers into a pan of water when baking. I also placed a few into ice wat... read more
Guest: Dar
This is such an amazing, yummy recipe. Making it again right now. My family and I LOVE it. Tastes as good as what you get in a French Restaurant. It took double the cooking time though, so the first time I was worried. But now I know to cook it for 1 3/4 hours and it will be perfect. Thank you for sharing!
Guest: Glenn
Easy to follow and the best part is my family loves it. One change is oven temp to 300 instead, could be my oven. Thank you for sharing this recipe.
Guest: Carla Spacher
I made this recipe some time ago and it turned out great. I did, however, have to cook it for much longer than suggested before it would set.
Guest Foodie
This recipe is awesome!! I love it and have made it several times. I also had to increase the cooking time to about 1 hr 45 min. Thanks for sharing!!!
stitchinthyme
Like pretty much every other reviewer said, this took a LOT longer than an hour to cook. After almost 4 hours during which I first increased the temp to 300, then to 325, the knife still did not come out clean, so I gave up and took them out. However, the next night when we tried them, they were really wonderful and the consistency was just fine; they were as good as any creme brulee I've had in restaurants. I will definitely make this again, though I can see I will need to play with the baking time and temperature.
Guest: Emmy
This is the easiest thing I have ever made, and it is delicious, I used to like Creme Brulee but now I can make it at home this good and easy...I love it
Guest: reiko516
Comes out perfectly every time! Make sure that you're putting the correct part of the egg in, though. I wasn't paying attention and put in the whites instead of the yolks the first time I tried this. It was still really good, although it definitely had an egg-y taste to it, ha.
tammymesser
This recipe is wonderful!! We LOVE it. The way I did it was in a 325 degree preheated oven and let my eggs and heavy cream come to room temperature, then I started making them. I used orange extract and grated orange peel. It was awesome!!! Today I think I'll try white chocolate latte powder and grated hersey bars,lol. Who knows, it just might come out terrific. But anyways Thanks for this Easy Creme Brulee Recipe, It helped alot.And we love them so much. Keep cooking and Take Care.Hope I see more of your recipe's. Sincerely, Tammy
