Crème Brûlée

There are many crème brûlée recipes, with or without some fruit as a surprise to the dish. Inspired by John Burton Race recipes, here's the one we serve in http://www.aubellefleur.com

Here's enough for 4 persons

Shopping list:

4 Egg yolks

180 gr. Caster sugar

2 Vanilla pods (or vanilla essence)

140 ml Milk

350 ml Double cream or Crème fraiche

Optional: raspberries to place underneath

Put the egg yolks and half of the sugar into a bowl.

Split the vanilla pods in two and scrape out all seeds into the egg yolks and whisk until smooth.

Add the milk, whisk in the cream (or crème fraiche) and pour the liquid into ramekins.

They need to refrigerate for 1 hour before you can cook them.

Pre-heat the oven to 150 degr.C.

Fill a shallow roasting tin with water to a depth of 2.5 cm, place on the stove and bring to just below the boil.

Put the ramekins into the water and place the tin into the oven.
This will take about 1 hour to set.

When they are cooked, remove from oven and roasting tin, because they need to cool down.

When they are cold, pre-heat the grill to its highest setting, sprinkle the tops with the remaining sugar

and when you see that it's caramelizing under the grill...it's ready to serve immediately.

If you make crème brûlées regularly, it's worth to buy a blow-torch, that saves you the hustle of the grill.

Why not putting a drop of Cognac in yours!

Mousse au Champagne with red berries

This dessert is a winner even if I say so myself and I haven't met anybody who didn't like it.
For 4 persons this is what you need.

Shopping list:
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 dl Champagne or sparkling wine
2 tablespoons of Pineau des Charentes or sweet sherry
4 tablespoons of white granular sugar (basterdsuiker)
A tiny little bit of nutmeg
A tiny little bit of cinnamon
2.5 dl double cream
Red/black berries, fresh is always better but otherwise buy a frozen mixed pack of red/black fruits (remember if frozen to defrost a few hours before using it).
Choco sticks or something else for decoration

Whisk the cream with (normal) sugar until it gets the thickness of porridge.
Mix the lemon juice with champagne, pineau or sherry, sugar, nutmeg and cinnamon.
Stir until the sugar has disappeared.
Add little by little the cream and stir.
Divide the fruit in 4 'verrines'.
Add the mixture of the mousse.
Decorate with some chocolate sticks.

All together it will take you about 10 minutes to make this desert, however, you can beat the cream earlier and stall it in the fridge until needed.  But only the cream!!!! Not with the mixture because it will be flat as a pancake ;-)