Berry Cream Brulee with Gold Leaf

This Raspberry Cream Brulee was the talking point of Baby M's 1st Birthday party! It was delicious, for sure, but eating gold....well who doesn't love doing that! I thought of the idea of putting gold leaf in one of the desserts was incredibly decadent and entirely appropriate for our baby's first birthday!! hehe sure sure. 

Unfortunately in my mad rush to get everything finished, I only took just one photo of each dish, and I don't think this shot does is much justice! 

Luckily my friends are keen instagrammers and so snapped these as well! 

I have been using the same recipe for Creme Brulee for a while now and I absolutely adore it. It has yet to fail me and is actually pretty simple to make. The recipe is out of Surfing the Menu by Curtis Stone too, so I mean, he has the sort of face you can trust right?! The recipe uses marscapone cheese as the base, which I knew from the get go was going to be a winner for us, we have an unhealthy obsession for the stuff and consume far too much than is good for you. But heck its delicious.

This is the recipe for Raspberry Creme Brulee, that simply has whole berries in the base of the dessert. I made a variation of this for the party, but will explain how to do that part at the end. 

Ingredients

1/3 cup of caster sugar

3 egg yolks and 1 full egg

3 tablespoons of milk

300ml of cream

250g of marscapone cheese

Raspberries

Demerra/raw sugar

Method

1. Heat milk and cream in a saucepan until almost boiling, but not quite. 

2. In a separate saucepan, combine eggs and sugar.

3. Whisk eggs and sugar until pale and creamy, only a minute or so.

4. Add the marscapone to the egg mix, 1/3 at a time and whisk. The mixture should now be fairly thick and smooth, however it doesn't make any difference if it is a little lumpy at this stage, it smoothes out completely in the next step, so there is no need to worry.

5. Add the hot milk/cream mixture to the egg/marscapone mixture and whisk over a low heat.

6. While the cream mixture is slowing heating, you can prepare the raspberries. Simply put a few raspberries in each dish that you will serve the creme brulee in. The recipe said 3 in each, I think that is a little frugal!

7. After about 10 minutes of stirring, the cream mixture (which is now "creme") should have thickened and needs to be strained into a jug. This is to get out any of the egg bits that didn't mix, or any of the creme mix that has hardened from cooling. This step is really important, you don't want your finished product to have any "bits" in it!

8. From here, you want to pour the warm creme into the prepared dishes for serving. This quantity would serve 4 smaller sized portions, or 3 happier sized ones!

9. Once all the creme has been evenly poured over the berries, they need to set in the fridge for a few hours. The recipe recommended overnight, but I don't have that kind of patience, so popped them in the freezer for 20 minutes to help speed up the setting process! This is so they form a little film on top for the caramel to set on top of. 

10. Once they have set, pour a couple of teaspoons of raw/demerra sugar over each one and spread evenly over the top. 

11. Now for the fun part!! Using a blow torch, slowly melt the sugar and torch until it has started to brown. It will be hot like lava, so don't attempt to touch it until you have allowed it time to cool first. Give it a gentle tap with a spoon to test if it is ready, it should be hard and likely to crack under pressure (aren't we all....). 

12. Serve with a few more raspberries and enjoy!

Berry variation used for the birthday party

1. Using fresh or thawed out frozen berries, blend about a cup of berries until smooth. 

2. Strain over a fine sieve to remove all the seeds. You don't want a crunchy creme and they will discolour slightly, so its best to remove them. 

3. Slowly pour into the creme at step 6 as it is thickening up. This allows you flexibility as to how much berry coulis you want to add depending on colour, flavour and thickness. If you've added quite a lot, it may take longer to thicken. 

4. Continue as above and if you want to be fancy pants too, add some gold leaf on top of the hardened caramel once it has set and cooled. 

As you can see, I served these in shot glasses, which was lots of fun for a party, and this quantity made 16 mini Creme Brulee's.