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Crème Caramel (Baked Custard Turned Out in Its Own Caramel)

Name: Crème Caramel (Baked Custard Turned Out in Its Own Caramel)
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 50 min
Total time: 1 h 20 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: French
Ingredients: 120 g sugar; 30 ml water; 500 ml whole milk; 0.5 vanilla pod; 3 eggs; 1 egg yolk; 80 g sugar; 1 pinch salt; 1 L boiling water

The French custard baked over a layer of caramel and turned out onto a plate. Two things decide it. Because it has to stand up unsupported once it leaves the mould it is made with whole eggs, not the yolks alone that go into crème brûlée — egg white sets firmer than yolk. And the caramel, poured in and set hard as glass, spends the night pulling water out of the custard and turning back into a syrup. No sauce is made: waiting is how the sauce gets made.

Ingredients

6servings

The caramel (6 ramekins)
sugar120 g
water30 ml
The custard
whole milk · cream instead makes it a different dish500 ml
vanilla pod · or 1 tsp vanilla extract0.5
eggs · whole; the whites are what make it stand3
egg yolk · buys a little of the tenderness back1
sugar80 g
salt1 pinch
The bain-marie
boiling water · poured into the oven tray1 L

Steps

Heat the oven to 150°C and stand 6 ramekins in a deep oven tray. Do not grease or butter them — what releases this later is the melted caramel, not fat.
⏲ 10 min
Put 120g sugar and 30ml water in a heavy pan and boil without stirring. Once it starts to melt, a spoon drags sugar crystals off the pan wall back in and they seed the whole lot (what sugar does). Swirl the pan instead once the edges colour.
⏲ 7 min
Off the heat the moment it is amber. By temperature rather than colour that is 175–180°C, and past 190°C it is bitter and unrecoverable. Divide the hot caramel between the ramekins quickly and tilt to coat the base thinly. It sets like glass within thirty seconds.
⏲ 1 min
Warm the milk and vanilla to steaming only, not boiling. In another bowl mix the 3 whole eggs, the extra yolk, 80g sugar and the salt without whisking air in. Air survives the bake and leaves the surface honeycombed.
⏲ 5 min
Pour the warm milk into the eggs a little at a time, stirring. All at once and the egg cooks where it lands (cooking eggs). Strain it twice to catch the chalazae and any lumps, then leave 5 minutes and skim off what foam is left.
⏲ 5 min
Pour the custard onto the set caramel and add boiling water to the tray, halfway up the ramekins. Water cannot exceed 100°C, so the outside never runs ahead of the centre — the bain-marie is a brake, not a humidifier.
⏲ 5 min
40–50 minutes at 150°C. Shake a ramekin gently: out it comes when the centre moves as one mass. If it ripples separately, give it 5 minutes more. That movement decides it, not the clock.
⏲ 45 min
Lift them out of the water, cool to room temperature, cover and refrigerate at least 6 hours, and overnight is better. That time is not only setting time — it is the caramel drawing water out of the custard and turning back into a syrup.
⏲ 240 min
Run a thin knife once around the wall of the ramekin, cover with a plate and invert in one movement. If it holds on, stand the base in hot water for 10 seconds. It is right when the caramel runs down as a sauce.
⏲ 3 min

Tips & Variations

Variations

Flan / purin: the same thing under other names — flan across the Spanish-speaking world, purin in Japan. ko.wikipedia files it as "a custard pudding with caramel syrup over it ... called flan in Spanish."
Leche flan (Philippines): made with condensed and evaporated milk and yolks only. Far denser and richer, and it still stands up on that formula because evaporated milk is already heat-concentrated and its proteins are stabilised (dairy and heat).
Flan napolitano (Mexico): cream cheese blended in, giving something close to a cheesecake in density.
One large mould: a 20cm round takes 60–75 minutes, and since far more weight bears on it when inverted, push the whole-egg proportion up.
Coffee, tea or orange peel: infused into the milk for 15 minutes and strained out.
Without the caramel there is no dish. Spoon a sauce over the top and it is a different dessert — here the sauce arrives from underneath.

Tips

The whole eggs are structure, not economy. Cooking eggs gives two numbers: white begins to set at 62°C and yolk at 68°C — and then a section for what those two numbers do not say, which stands this dish beside its neighbour: white sets firm and sliceable, yolk sets soft and creamy. Crème brûlée is eaten with a spoon out of the dish it was baked in, so yolks alone will do. This has to leave the mould and stand up on a plate, so it needs the whites.
And it does the thing crème brûlée tells you not to do. That page says: "Do not swap in milk ... made with milk this becomes something closer to a steamed egg custard." Correct — and this is that other dish. Milk plus whole eggs gives a custard with a bite to it; cream plus yolks gives one that coats the tongue. Four ingredients, two different desserts.
The caramel becoming a sauce is what the waiting does. On the pages around it, sugar pulling in moisture is a fault: dasik weeps if it is over-honeyed, and tanghulu, baekseolgi and bara brith all carry the same warning. Here it is the design. Caramel set hard as glass draws water out of the custard, loosens into a syrup, and leaves the custard very slightly firmer for it. Which is why making it the day before is the recipe, not a convenience.
Do not grease the ramekins. What releases it is the melted caramel, so fat only gets between the caramel and the custard.
Do not burn the caramel. This is exactly why the sugar guide says to judge by temperature rather than colour and to pull it one stage early: the custard is mild, so there is nothing to hide a bitter caramel behind.
A honeycombed surface has two causes: air whisked in, or the oven too hot. Past 85°C the proteins contract and squeeze water out, and those spots stay as holes.