Flavored Creme Brulee - How To

[alanamoana]

I'd like to make matcha (green tea) creme brulee for some friends, but I've never had matcha before, so I don't know what it tastes like! I have no problems making a regular creme brulee - I use a recipe from Cook's Illustrated. The ingredients (halved, to make four servings) are 2 cups heavy cream, 1/3 cup sugar, half a vanilla bean, and 6 egg yolks. How might I adapt this recipe for a matcha creme brulee? Omit the vanilla bean? Maybe increase the sugar to counter the bitterness of the matcha? And how much matcha should I use? Thanks for any help! 

←

i'd leave the vanilla bean in to round out the flavor of the brulee. the matcha will be a personal preference as to how much you use. start out with your basic recipe and add about a teaspoon of the matcha powder to the cream. make your base and then taste (once you add egg and everything else, the flavor will be diluted). add more matcha as necessary. you shouldn't have to adjust sugar or anything unless you feel it needs it.

just like with savory cooking, taste as you go...there are no hard and fast rules with flavoring agents. but remember to start out slow...you can always add more but you can't remove excess!

[sanrensho]

you shouldn't have to adjust sugar or anything unless you feel it needs it.

I agree. I don't increase the sugar in any of my matcha desserts, just as I don't seek to increase sugar for recipes that use cocoa (both powders having a bitter quality).

The amount of matcha used is up to personal taste, as is your choice of using vanilla. You might want to cut back on the vanilla somewhat, in order to avoid overwhelming the matcha.

[KKLL00b]

I liked the lemongrass creme brulee at a friend's restaurant so I first learned to make a "classic" brulee before going crazy with my variations. At the same time, I saw that Mark Okumura, exec pastry chef at Alan Wong's at the time, made a "brulee sampler" featuring five mini brulees presented in Chinese porcelain soup spoons. Flavors included Kona Mocha, Thai Creme, Mango Creme, Lilikoi (passion fruit), and Hawaiian Vintage Chocolate.

Here's a link to Mark's "Five Spoons of Creme Brulee" at

GourmetSleuth

I also made friends with lavender growers on Maui and got about two cups each of English lavender and Grosso lavendin (hybrid) buds to experiment with. The first time out, I put waaaaay tooooo much lavender in the cream infusion so it tasted very "soapy". Fortunately, I was able to dilute the infused cream with half and half to tone down the lavender. English lavender has a very delicate flavor and required about 2 teaspoons of buds per cup of cream. Grosso is much stronger so I ended up using about 1/2 teaspoon of buds per cup of cream.

I have experimented with other flavors including coconut, matcha (green tea), Kona coffee, lemongrass, ginger, lemongrass/ginger, macadamia nut, hazelnut, tangerine, bergamot, lilikoi, New Mexico green chile, and Chinese five spice. Although they all got fairly good responses from my taste testers, the overwhelming favorite was the lemongrass/ginger brulee.

It was quite challanging getting the balance of the lemongrass and ginger, but I finally developed a technique that works quite well for me. I made separate infusions of lemongrass creme and ginger cream. I then combined 50% lemongrass creme and 50% ginger creme and tasted it. I found it to be too "gingery" so I added a tablespoon or two of lemongrass cream at a time, until I got my desired balance. After that, I added plain cream to get the required volume for the recipe. Any leftover infused cream was used to make truffles and panna cotta.

I now use this method to balance flavors for all kinds of brulees and plan to make a "Mexican chocoloate" or "Holy Mole-y" brulee with dark chocolate, Kona coffee, cinnamon, cumin, pepitas, rasins, and ancho and chipotle peppers.

Recently I was at another friend's gelato factory to pick up my favorite giandjua gelato and he offered me a gelato made with green tea, lemongrass, and kafir lime that completely blew me away. Guess I'll have to see how well this combination translates to creme brulee and other desserts like panna cotta and truffles.

I used to like bold, in-yer-face flavors, but the subtleties of all the flavors got lost in the mix. At one point a friend of mine mentioned that I had so much lemon in the lilikoi brulee that I may as well just make a lemon brulee and not waste the lilikoi.

Another time, I put way to much green chili that it was too hot for most people, even though I really enjoyed the heat/pungency.

Now it's how little of a flavoring I can use to achieve the desired taste.

[Reignking]

I used this recipe for lavender creme brulee, and the flavor turned out wonderfully:

In a large, heavy saucepan over medium heat, add cream and the lavender flowers; heat just to a simmer. Remove from heat and allow lavender flowers to infuse with the cream for 5 minutes. Strain cream mixture through a fine mesh strainer to remove lavender flowers.