Chocolate Banana Strawberry Creme Brulee [Recipes]

2007 Jan 3
So this is my Chocolate Banana Strawberry Creme Brulee recipe, previously requested by SteffQ. Enjoy!

What you need for the creme brulee:

1 1/4 cups 35% cream
1 tablespoon vanilla extract or a vanilla bean, split and scraped
5 ounces dark or bittersweet chocolate, chopped finely
4 egg yolks
1 tablespoon sugar
Cane sugar for topping

What you have to do with it:

Take the cream, and the vanilla bean if you have one (including the seeds), and heat it up in a double boiler for a good 10 - 15 minutes. If you have vanilla extract, keep that for later. When the vanilla infused cream is nice and hot, pour it over the chocolate, and let it sit for 5 minutes. Mix the cream and the chocolate until well combined, and place over the double boiler for another 5 minutes or so, or until everything is melted.

Meanwhile, whisk the sugar and the egg yolks in a seperate bowl until they are pale and frothy. Slowly (and when I say slowly here, I mean old lady on Motrin slow) pour in the chocolate cream mixture over the eggs while whisking to prevent your eggs from scrambling. This procedure (bringing the eggs up to the cream's temperature) is called tempering.

Now, take your egg-cream-chocolate mixture and put it back on the double boiler, and cook it until it thickens and coats the back of a wooden spoon, another 5 - 8 minutes. When it hits that stage, take it off the heat and throw it in the icebox. This extra step will make your creme brulees extra creamy. Once the mixture is cooled down, pour it into the equivalent of 4 4oz ramekins. Place the ramekins in a bain marie and bake until the custard is set, about an hour in a 300 degree Farenheit oven.

Now, once your custard is cooked and set, take them out of the bain marie, cover them and throw em' in the fridge. While they cool down, do the following:

The Topping - Starberry Banana Flambee:

What you need:

1 - 2 bananas, not too ripe, sliced
1 cup sliced strawberries
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 cup Appleton Estate Jamaican Rhum or your favorite dark rhum (Crown Royal works well also)
A splash of water
A match

On medium heat, melt the butter until it bubbles and a fragrant nutty aroma is present (essentially, you're browning the butter, a crucial flavor enhancer). Throw in the the fruit, and cook them for 2 - 3 minutes, or until they get a bit of color. Now, here's the hard part if it's your first time doing this: the flambee. Please, if you don't feel up to it, DON'T DO IT! The flames can reach up to 2 feet high. This is dangerous, but the end result is just sooooo good.

So what you want to do is pour the rhum around the pan, wait 2 - 3 seconds for the excess alcohol to burn off, and light it with the match. Now, if you have a gas stove, just tip the pan forward, the heat will ignite it. Once it is lit, dont let go of the pan's handle, but take a step back and keep the pan moving. If it is done right, the flames should be a bright blue/red/violet and should last a good 15 - 20 seconds. Add the water and let the liquid cook down until thick and syrupy. Take it off the heat and let it stand.

Now, once the creme brulees are cool, take them out and sprinkle some sugar on top, enough to cover the entire surface area. Using a torch, melt the sugar, going in a concentric circular pattern, from the exterior all the way into the center. Once the sugar is a dark golden brown, stop torching it and let it sit until the sugar is hard, about 30 seconds. Now, take the flambeed fruit and scoop it on top the creme brulee. This is optional, but I like to spinkle a couple drops of rhum on top and light that too. It makes for a great presentation, especially at dinner parties.

The contrast of textures, the hot, cold, crunchy, and soft and the flavours will just blow you away. So there it is, my once secret Chocolate Banana Strawberry Creme Brulee recipe. I hope you guys love it as mcuh as I do.





2007 Jan 3
Holy crap! As a 15 year-old, I'm impressed you care about presentation when attending dinner parties! Your friends must feel somewhat inadequate when they show up with a crumpled bag of Doritos and an already-opened carton of chocolate milk. Or perhaps you have friends outside your age group? ;-}

Thanks for the recipe - it sounds bloody well delicious (and difficult)!

2007 Jan 3
Thank you TJ! sounds delicious :)

2007 Jan 4
Well, I usually cater for my parents and their friends once in a while. They each give me 20$ to buy the stuff, and whatever is left, I keep. there are 8 people, including my parents, so i get 120$ to shop and make a classy dinner. However, I recently made a dinner for my girlfriend's friend dinner party. It was a notch down from the usual because, unfortunately, the young tend to have a very unrefined pallate. Luckily, my girlfriend doesn't, so she eats everything I make.

2007 Jan 15
Hi:

I just joined today, and was thrilled to find this recipe posted--I wanted something like that for Valentine's (which is also a kind of anniversary for me and mine) and an opportunity to use the blow torch I got for Xmas! At first my mister got me a fancy $30 one from the "Housewares" department, and it was a mistake--flimsy, fiddly, and didn't even work (couldn't get the fuel in)! So we returned it and got the $14 one from the hardware section. Much better.

So thanks, and glad to join!

glinda


2007 Jan 15
Question to anyone who knows:

Can you make a creme brulee/creme caramel/flan-type dessert using a heart-shaped cookie cutter? I realize that the custard would run out underneath onto the baking pan underneath, but is there a way to, say, wrap it in tin foil to keep it from running out? Or some other method?

Other than that, does anyone know of a store that sells heart-shaped ceramic, like a couer-de-creme without the holes?

Thanks!

Glinda

2007 Jan 15
I'm certainly no expert (having never made creme brulee) but here's my take on it:

* I'd imagine you could make heart-shaped creme brulee just fine by forming a "nest" of tin foil inside a heart-shaped cookie cutter. The problem is when it comes time to serve it... you'd have to serve it in the foil and cutter because creme brulee isn't able to stand up on its own.

* creme caramel (flan) on the other hand, is more firm and is able to stand on its own. In fact, it's usually made in a bowl or dish and then inverted for serving (just like jell-o).

Your best bet is to buy heart-shaped ramekins, but you already know that since you asked about them. I'd guess one of the bigger stores (Ma Cuisine or C.A. Paradis) would have them. It's worth giving them a call.

Good luck! :)

2007 Jan 15
You might have more luck making a round mold into a heart mold using tin foil...just a thougt.

2007 Jan 16
as Mark stated, you can buy heart shaped ramekins at Domus Housewares (I worked there, I know they have them) they are dirt cheap and very durable. you can make all sorts of stuff in them, not only creme brulee. I am glad you all liked my recipe :)

And by the way, Glinda, good choice on the industrial torch! The cheap, small resevoired "torches" you can buy are useless! It literally takes minutes to brulee the creme when it should take no more than 30 seconds. I have a BernzOmatic Propane torch, but I am looking at a nifty Ronson fuelled Butane Torch. It can make toast out of steel :)

2007 Jan 16
Thanks, I'll try Domus. I'm a little silly about Valentine's, since it was our (how shall I put it?) "sleeping together" anniversary, and it's comin' on 26 years. Now we eat...more than anything else...

but "love is all you need" and food...