Bob Hart's Creme Brulee

Far too little attention is paid, in my view, to great puddings. And there are some brilliant ones to pay attention to, many of them English, as it happens – dishes like bread and butter pudding or my favourite, treacle tart.

But if you ran a survey to establish the most popular pudding in Australia, my money would be on crème brulee. Visit a restaurant where it is on the menu and even people who don’t order pudding will often order it. And why not?

But why wait until you are in a restaurant to have crème brulee. It is a very simple pudding to make provided you have a gentle hand with cooking temperatures.

Here’s how I make it:

Set your oven to 140C. Warm 600ml of whipping cream.   In a bowl, beat five egg yolks and three and a half TBS caster sugar. Splash in 1 tsp vanilla extract or, alternatively, scrape the seeds from one split vanilla bean into the cream, bring almost to the boil, and then allow to return to warm before proceeding.
Gradually add the warm cream, whisking, to the egg yolks and sugar. And there you have it.

Divide the mixture between however many shallow ramekin or gratin dishes you can fill and place them in a baking dish. Pour in water to come half way up the sides of the dishes and place in the oven. Depending on the depth of your dishes, cooking time will be about 45 mins, or until set. Remove, cool, sprinkle each crème with a layer of caster sugar and glaze with a blow torch or, if you have one, a crème brulee iron (the blow torch is easier).

Eat immediately with a rich dessert wine.