Creme Brûlée

Creme Brûlée

     I made Creme Brûlée  for the first time yesterday evening.  I used a recipe I found on line at allrecipes.com.  I already had some cream in the fridge that had been purchased for a different project. Earlier in the day Linda and I had dyed raw duck eggs with the Veachlings and then blew out the contents so she could use the colored eggs to make an Easter Tree.  Since we have such a surplus of duck eggs at the moment we did over two dozen. I put all of the erstwhile contents of the blown eggs into the fridge in tupperware containers.  So I had all of the necessary ingredients for Creme Brulee, i.e. the cream, vanilla, and lots of egg yolks.  I had even purchased some really cool large crystal raw sugar several weeks ago that I thought would be perfect to top off the Creme Brûlée. I know that Creme Brûlée really isn't supposed to be capitalized, but some desserts do deserve capitalization, grammar rules notwithstanding. My only remaining problem was how to extract just six egg yolks from a tupperware container full of a dozen fairly scrambled eggs.  Fortunately, since the container was clear, I noticed that the yolk had floated to the top.  I did a little research on line and found that your average large chicken egg has a yolk that weighs about 17 grams.  That made it a simple task with the kitchen scale to skim off 102 grams of egg yolk from the top portion of one of the containers.

    The particular recipe I followed called for 2 1/2 cups of cream, six egg yolks, 6 tablespoons of sugar (4 to go into the creme brûlée and 2 to mix with two tablespoons of brown sugar for the topping) 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract, and two tablespoons of brown sugar.  I used the 4 tablespoons of sugar, but omitted the last two tablespoons and the brown sugar as I used the raw sugar as the topping.  This particular recipe called for the use of the oven broiler to melt the sugar sprinkled on top of the creme brûlée.  It wasn't as much fun as using a propane torch but the result was good.  I was very pleased with how it turned out. It was every bit as good as the creme brûlée I had once in the restaurant at the top of the Columbia Tower. I do have to admit that the view was much better with that one.  As much as I love creme brûlée I did condescend to share it with my visiting grand daughters.  Not surprisingly, they failed to fully appreciate it.  Madelynn said it was good, but she liked tapioca pudding better.  Abby said she liked it but didn't care for the crunchy sugar on top. Natalie tried it and said it was good but ate very little of it.  Natalie's enthusiasm could have been cooled by the large amount of malted milk easter eggs she had eaten an hour or so earlier.

     Linda doesn't much care for custard desserts but she does make them for me once in a while.  In fact she made me a lovely bread pudding shortly after she got back from China. You have to really appreciate someone making something for you that they don't much care for themselves.

Note the telltale holes in some of the eggs

    I recently purchased a little book on line for my iPhone entitled Southern Biscuit Basics.  I tried out one of the recipes this morning when I made egg McMuffins for the girls.  I used just butter and all purpose flour and it seemed that the biscuits turned  out well. They were reasonably light, but not the ultimate biscuit. I forgot to put in any salt and almost forgot to put in the baking powder as the recipe called for self-rising flower.  I couldn't really judge the biscuits as well in an egg mcmuffin as I could have judged them if we had eaten them with just butter and honey. It also wouldn't have been a fair trial with the salt omitted.

      Linda sent me to Wallmart today to pick up a couple of tandem bikes she had ordered on line.  While there, I picked up some self-rising flour (supposedly lower in protein than all purpose flour), buttermilk, and some Rumford baking powder. Both Calumet and Clabber Girl baking powder contain aluminum, while Rumford doesn't.  The absence of aluminum in the baking powder is supposed to make a better tasting biscuit.  If buttermilk is used instead of regular milk, then baking soda can be used instead of baking powder.  I'm planning on making biscuits two or three times a week until I decide which recipe and ingredients I like best.

    One of the hens has become a regular contributor now that she has laid three days in a row. The chickens are still loosing ground, but at a slower rate now. The current score is Ducks 110, Chickens 3.
I added some more fencing to the top of the chicken pen in an effort to prevent them from roosting on top of the duck pen.  It obviously was not enough to keep them all at home, but I did succeed in making it more difficult for them.  I think a few of the hens have even taken to sleeping in the hen house but most of them are still sleeping out in the rain. At least they are having to work harder to be dumb.