Lavender Crème Brulee (No Torch Needed)
Lavender Crème Brulee brings together the crunchy sugar topped custard of a standard crème brulee with subtly floral lavender flavor.
I decided something today. When it comes to a Crème Brulee obsession, once is never enough. You see, back in the day I did over a half dozen variations in succession. Then I stopped.
But in late fall, I remade my No Torch Crème Brulee. And today I did Lavender. And an experimental Strawberry Crème Brulee is in the works. Yes, when spring beckons, it calls for delicate new flavors and brunch-worthy recipes.
And so today’s Lavender Crème Brulee brings together two wonderful taste sensations: your classic caramelized sugar topping, along with a (slightly less classic) spring-like lavender custard.
Happy spring!
Why You’ll Love This!
A Sensory Delight. You start with bold caramelized sugar complementing lightly floral lavender. Then add crunchy topping contrasting with delicate custard! Yum!
Easy. Crème Brulee tastes difficult but is easy to make. The only hard part is waiting for it to chill!
Impressive. Yes, that “looks difficult” part (shhh) will impress your friends. And trendy flavors like lavender will make you look even more sophisticated!
Step by Step Overview
Heat oven to 325°F. Place 6 (4-oz) ceramic ramekins in a 13×9-inch pan. Heat a kettle of water to use later in the water bath.
In a medium saucepan, whisk together eggs, cream, milk, sugar, vanilla and lavender paste.
Heat, stirring, until just hot (about 150F). Strain into a pouring vessel.
Divide the custard evenly between the ramekins in the 13 x 9 pan.
Carefully place pan with ramekins in oven. While in oven, pour enough boiling water into pan, being careful not to splash water into ramekins, until water covers half to two-thirds of the height of the ramekins.
Bake in a water bath–add water AFTER pan is in oven
Bake until custard is set but still jiggly (temp around 170 if you want to test). Carefully remove ramekins—I found that lifting with a hamburger turner worked best.
Refrigerate until chilled, approximately 2 hours (longer is okay if you wish).
To brown under the broiler, spread evening with brown sugar and pat to level. Broil one at a time until melted and caramelized. To brown with a torch spread evenly with white sugar, then torch per manufacturers directions.
To Torch or Broil
While using a kitchen torch to caramelize your topping is the gold standard, I actually found broiling to have a shorter learning curve. In fact when I tried this again after a long break, the broiling came out good right away. The torching, on the other hand, produced a couple of ugly crème brulees, before I got the hang of it again.
But what I like about the torch is that once you have it down, it produces a prettier result. So my thought is that if you don’t know if you’ll like making this… or if you’re going to do this once a year, stick with the broiler. If you start to make it more often, well, you’ll know when it’s time to buy a torch.
If you’re a newbie, consider practicing your caramelization before committing to serving the public. Though for this batch I even successfully peeled off a layer of partly burnt sugar and redid my first try.
Variations
If I’ve got you starting on a crème brulee obsession too (my apologies), here are some others you can try: Irish Coffee Creme Brulee, Maple Pumpkin Creme Brulee, or Strawberry Creme Brulee. Or for the rich taste of custard without any torching, you can always try Creme Caramel!
As for my other lavender obsessions, my lemon lavender cupcakes are a huge family favorite. Or consider a Relaxing Lavender Latte, or Lemon Lavender Cookies.
Tips & FAQs
To make ahead, bake the custards, but don’t place the caramelizing sugar on the top. Store covered (I’d probably keep them in a lidded lasagna pan) in the refrigerator up to two days. A couple hours before serving, caramelize and re-chill.
I don’t temper my eggs but instead heat them with the custard mix. In my experience, cooks are more likely to make an error adding hot milk to eggs rather than heating them together slowly. While it’s theoretically possible, I have never scrambled my eggs doing this.
And for more tasty #SpringSweetsWeek treats:
- Strawberry Swirl Banana Bread by Hezzi-D’s Recipe Box
- Sushki by A Day in the Life on the Farm
- Baked Carrot Cake Donuts by Jolene’s Recipe Journal
- Sourdough Cardamom Buns by A Kitchen Hoor’s Adventures
- Carrot Halwa by Magical Ingredients
- Pistachio Lemon Ricotta Cookies by The Spiffy Cookie
- Lavender Creme Brulee by Art of Natural Living
- Chocolate Raspberry Marble Pound Cake by Karen’s Kitchen Stories
- Easy Lemon Curd by Rave About Food
No Torch Lavender Creme Brulee
Ingredients
- 4 egg yolks
- 1 ½ cup whipping cream
- ½ cup skim milk or whole or reduced fat
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 teaspoons lavender paste (like Taylor Colledge) or 2 Tablespoons dried lavender (see note)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla or 1 vanilla bean (see note)
- 9 teaspoons brown sugar for broiler topping, white sugar for torch topping, approx. 1 ½ teaspoons per serving
Instructions
- Heat oven to 325°F. Place 6 (4-oz) ceramic ramekins in a 13x9-inch pan.
- Heat a kettle of water to use later in the water bath.
- In a medium saucepan, whisk together eggs, cream, milk, sugar, vanilla and lavender paste.
- Heat, stirring, until just hot (about 150F).
- Strain into a pouring vessel.
- Divide the custard evenly between the ramekins in the 13 x 9 pan.
- Carefully place pan with ramekins in oven. While in oven, pour enough boiling water into pan, being careful not to splash water into ramekins, until water covers half to two-thirds of the height of the ramekins.
- Bake until custard is set but still jiggly (temp around 170 if you want to test). Remove and cool
- Carefully remove ramekins—I found that lifting with a hamburger turner worked best. Refrigerate until chilled, approximately 2 hours (longer is okay if you wish).
- To brown under the broiler, spread evening with brown sugar and pat to level. Broil one at a time until melted and caramelized. To brown with a
Notes
Nutrition
Updated from the original published April 8, 2016
Why skim milk and not regular milk?
You can use whole milk if you’d like or anything in between. I read a comparison on hitting the right fat ratio. But really it’s so good you can’t go wrong. I’ll update the recipe to indicate this–it’s a good question.
Stunning images! SO tempting! I wish I could scoop it right off the screen.
I wish you could too–it would be such a fun way to share!
Creme Brulee is my favorite! Lavender sounds like the perfect hint of spring.
This is absolutely stunning. Fingers crossed the lavender I planted last year survived the winter. If not, I’ll be ordering some paste!
Great tips on caramelizing the topping of creme brulee. It’s my husband’s favorite dessert. I do have a torch but I’m not that good at it, so the broiler sounds like something I’ll be trying.
Good lunch with the broiler Karen. Or you could practice a lot with the torch and eat your mistakes 🙂
I just happen to have some culinary lavender looking for a purpose. Thanks for the nudge.
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Well, Inger, as you can imagine, I am a huge fan of lavender crème brûlée. Our recipes are slightly different, so I’d have to try yours soon! I had my first lavender crème brûlée in San Francisco and have never looked back…
you definitely don’t need to apologize for this–bring on the brulee! i’ve found that i really like lavender in sweets…in VERY low amounts. i like to just be able to pick up on it. this recipe might be a little too flowery for me but i’d still very much like to eat it! 🙂
I never can say no to that! It looks amazing. Thanks for sharing this great recipe.
To confess, I have sometimes eaten two when I’ve made this 😉
Looks absolutely stunning!
Thanks Vicky! Gotta love a recipe that looks as good as it tastes, don’t you!
Inger what lovely and amazing recipe !! Love this <3
Thanks Gloria!
Gorgeous – don’t you love finding a recipe that works every time you make it?
I have so much trouble with cheesecake (partly because I keep trying to convert regular recipes to minis, which need really smooth sides…), that I was overjoyed to find out how easy this was!
Nevermind! I see Mae asked the same thing above and it is Washington Island! I have been wanting to go there for so long and a trip in July during the festival sounds lovely.
We went to Rock Island too in the same trip. It was a ton of fun!
Love lavender too and this recipe looks tasty! Please share what Lake Michigan island you traveled to!
Oh Inger…yes, lavender just sound so good in this crème brûlée…I can only imagine just how fragrant this must be.
Have a great weekend 🙂
It felt so good to get a breath of spring in this Juliana! Have a good week!
I must be reading badly… your recipe calls for 1/2 cup skim milk but I don’t see where you use it. I love lavender so it sounds delicious.
Also, I wondered, which Lake Michigan island?
best… mae at maefood.blogspot.com
Thank you so much for catching this Mae, the skim milk goes with the cream. I will edit the recipe. There are a couple of lavender farms on Washington Island and one of them does a Lavender Festival one weekend in July. There aren’t a lot of activities but the food is good (the ice cream was amazing!) and you can team a day trip with other island activities.
I would give anything to eat a bite of this tonight. Sounds SO delicious! I am glad to visit again and see you are still blogging.
Wish I could share with you Kathy!
Sounds yummy. Looks so good.
THanks Freeda!