Old Fashioned Crème Brûlée
Instead of one recipe, I have two for you this week! First is my husband, BC’s, recipe for an old fashioned cocktail. Second is a crème brûlée inspired by those flavors.
BC’s Old Fashioned Cocktail Recipe
Who wants to go through the bother of making simple syrup on the rare occasion that calls for cocktails at home? BC certainly doesn’t, so in this recipe the sweetness comes from orange juice and maple syrup instead.
Yield: 2–3 drinks
Time: 10 minutes
Ingredients
1 orange
6 oz (114 g) bourbon
8 drops aromatic bitters (such as Angostura)
1 tsp (12 g) maple syrup
2–3 large ice cubes
Luxardo or amarena cherries (optional; for garnish)
Instructions
1. Wash and dry the orange. Using a vegetable peeler or a sharp knife, remove 3 strips of peel, being careful not to cut into the white pith underneath. Set aside.
2. Cut the orange in half and scoop the flesh out of one half. Place it in a measuring cup. Add the bourbon and muddle until well combined.
3. Using a sieve, strain the liquid into another cup and discard the pulp.
4. Add the maple syrup and bitters to the bourbon mixture and stir until the syrup dissolves completely.
5. Place one ice cube in each glass and pour the bourbon mixture over it.
6. Hold an orange rind peel side down over each glass and squeeze, bringing the edges together, to release the oil. Rub the peel along the rim of each glass.
7. Garnish with the slices of peel and a cherry.
Notes and tips
You’ll be left with half an orange when you’re done. Either double the recipe for a crowd or squeeze the orange and drink a shot of juice right away. It will get bitter if it sits.
If you can’t find luxardo or amarena cherries (I’ve had luck at Trader Joe’s and Wegman’s), then skip the cherry garnish entirely. Luxardo and amarenas actually taste and look like cherries, and their syrup is correspondingly delicious. A maraschino won’t be an adequate substitute.
The step with the orange peel is called expressing the oils. It sounds pretentious (when I first heard about it, I snickered), but it makes a difference—you’ll notice a heady citrus aroma with each sip. If you’re lucky, you’ll even see a small spray of oil coat the cocktail, but you can still have done it right even if it looks like nothing happened.
Old Fashioned Crème Brûlée
Recipe
Yield: 4 servings
Time: 45 minutes plus 4 hours’ cooling time
Ingredients
6 egg yolks
½ c (110 g) sugar, plus extra for caramelizing
2 c (480 g) heavy cream
2 and ½ tbsp (35 g) whiskey
zest of 1 orange
2 tbsp orange juice
⅛ tsp salt
Instructions
1. Preheat your oven to 325°F. Boil a large pot of water. Place 4 ramekins in a large pan with rimmed sides or a deep baking dish.
2. In a bowl with a pour spout, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar until they are light yellow in color and set aside.
3. In a small pot, whisk together the heavy cream, whiskey, orange zest, orange juice, and salt.
4. Cook the heavy cream mixture over medium heat until it simmers, then take it off the heat.
5. Stirring constantly, ladle the hot cream into the eggs, a little bit at a time, until ⅔ of the mixture is incorporated, then add the rest all at once and stir well to combine.
6. Pour the custard into the ramekins and place the ramekins in the baking dish.
7. Fill the baking dish (not the ramekins!) with enough boiling water so that it comes halfway up the sides of the ramekins.
8. Bake the crème brûlées on the middle rack of the oven for 20–30 minutes. The centers should be wobbly when jiggled but no longer look liquid, and the internal temperature should be 170°F–175°F.
9. Carefully remove the ramekins from the hot water bath (silicone-tipped tongs or pancake turners are helpful here) and allow them to cool on the counter until they reach room temperature, about an hour. Place them in the fridge and set for 3 hours before torching the tops.
10. Once they are chilled and immediately before serving, sprinkle a thin, even layer of sugar over the top of each one. Using a blowtorch, heat the sugar until it browns and smokes a tiny bit. Let rest for a minute to firm up, then eat.
Notes and tips
My taste testers noticed pockets of whiskey in their crème brûlées. Some bites would have very little whiskey flavor, and other spots would have a lot. If you want your crème brûlées to be more even, pause to stir the custard mixture very well before pouring it into each ramekin.
The step where you add the warm cream to the egg yolks is called tempering. You want to do this slowly so that the yolks don’t turn into scrambled egg.
The water bath gently cooks the crème brûlées by keeping the temperature around them low, ensuring a creamy texture.
The wobble of a properly cooked crème brûlée should remind you of jello. If the center looks liquid you shake the pan, it’s not done. Don’t stress too much about this step. They firm up more as they chill, and they taste great even if they aren’t firmly set!
The story
Confession: I hate whiskey.
BC, on the other hand, loves it. He enjoys getting a bottle as a gift, he’s always up for a whiskey-tasting event, and he judges a bar by how good their old-fashioned cocktail is. He likes old fashioneds so much he developed his own recipe for the drink, which he makes when we have friends over for dinner.
A few months ago, BC was sipping his latest experiment, deciding if he needed to adjust the maple syrup, when his eyes suddenly lit up. “You know what would be good?” he said. “Tell me,” I replied. “An old fashioned crème brûlée! You could put whiskey and orange juice in the custard, and the caramelized sugar would go really well with the smoky flavor!” I wrote the idea down, but I wasn’t enthusiastic about it.
I’d never developed a recipe that I didn’t want to eat before, and the whiskey turned me off this one. When I’m in the fifth or sixth test version of a cake, the thing that keeps me going is remembering how excited I was about the idea when I started. If I didn’t enjoy it, would I have the motivation to finish the recipe?
Besides, this whole blog was my thing, and I didn’t want BC imposing his creative vision on my project. So I tabled the idea. BC wouldn’t think twice if I quietly let the old fashioned crème brûlée die. The list of things I want to bake is a mile long, after all, and some ideas have languished in my “To Make” document for years.
But my conscience bothered me. If I wasn’t planning on making his recipe, I needed to tell him so. But if I did decide to bake it, it would be an easy recipe, and goodness knows I need more of those in my life. I wouldn’t be starting from scratch—the cocktail-inspired crème brûlées I’d made last Easter were a strong starting point. That, and I kept thinking about how much BC contributes to the blog.
I think of myself as a one-woman show (I come up with my own ideas, develop my own recipes, write the recipes, take my own pictures, edit the photos, and write and edit the stories you read here), but I don’t do this alone. I rely on my taste-testers, and BC is the best one. Even if he knows I desperately want him to say that the recipe I’m working on is perfect and doesn’t need more changes, he tells me what he actually thinks. “The cream puffs should be a little crunchier.” Dang it! I consider, then reluctantly admit, He’s right. My recipes turn out better because of his suggestions. And he proofreads when I need him to, saving me from some embarrassing typos.
He keeps me going when I don’t think I can make one more pavlova or it feels like my newsletters are just being sent out into the void. “This one is especially funny,” was his feedback on my passionfruit donut post. “Wow! That photo looks amazing,” he says when he peers over my shoulder as I edit. “You’re an excellent baker,” he tells me when I throw away a batch of horrible, soggy marshmallows. When we meet new people and I tell them what I do, BC’s face lights up and he waxes poetic about my chocolate cake. “Megan’s recipes are fantastic. You need to check out her blog,” he says. I pretend to be embarrassed, but I’m actually very pleased.
This blog is my thing, but he has invested a lot, too. And I loved him enough to develop one recipe I wasn’t excited about but that he really wanted.
So I did, and that part of the story has a disgustingly happy ending, too. When I made the crème brûlées, I found that the cream mellowed out the whiskey. Combine that with a little acid from the orange juice and a little salt in the custard, and the finished version was a well-balanced dessert that BC and I both really enjoyed.
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Both of these look delicious! Thank you!