Crème Brûlée with Strawberry, Take 1

I have a lot of ideas floating around in my head. Some of those concepts are going to be easier to work with and implement than others. Some of them require special ingredients or tools that I don’t have access to right now. Others require knowledge or skill that I don’t have yet. Luckily, a few of them are within reach. One of those concepts was the idea of making crème brûlée, but having the custard freestanding on the plate and having the burnt sugar as a separate component that could be placed as I saw fit.

One of the reasons I wanted to pursue this dessert is the idea that you, as a chef, can get your guest to try something new by giving them something familiar. In general, and of course there are always exceptions to every rule, but in general people like to eat that which is familiar to them. I think that especially is true when it comes to dessert. When people want something sweet and comforting, they look to the things that have given them pleasure in the past. Why do you think chocolate desserts are always the most popular on a menu? In this dessert, I am using the familiarity of the crème brûlée to give the guest a new experience in the way it is presented.

As a reference to creating the crème brûlée, I looked at two of chef Alex Stupak’s recipes, his cuttable lime curd and his flexible chocolate ganache. My initial thought was to make the crème brûlée stable enough that I could mold it in a shallow tray, cut it to the shape I wanted, and lift it out to place it on the plate. However, as I researched what stabilizers I wanted to use and the more I thought about it, I realized that this would take the final texture of the custard much too far away from the original crème brûlée that I am referencing. Eventually, I decided to set the custard in a flexible silicon mold, which would give me the general shape I was looking for and allow me to keep the texture closer to what I wanted.

My first attempt at making the custard was a bit of a failure, though it pointed me in the right direction. I used a standard crème brûlée recipe but added kappa carrageenan and locust bean gum. The casein micelles in the cream mesh with the gel network of the k-carr that has synergistic effect, which increases the gel strength. However, by itself the gel would be too brittle, which is why I added the locust bean gum. LBG softens the gel and increases its pseudoplasticity. To be honest, the reason I chose these gums is because it is what I have on hand. My first choice would be iota carrageenan alone, but I don’t have any right now. At some point I will order some and rework this recipe using it.

As I was working on this dessert, I saw a posting on Ideas in Food about a custard that they had stabilized with carrageenan. I have to thank Aki and Alex for the idea of dispersing the gums in the egg yolks before tempering. My first attempt failed when I tried to add the gums (mixed with sugar) to the custard after I had tempered it with the yolks. The gums clumped together and couldn’t be sheared apart without breaking down the egg proteins.

My next attempt got me closer, but not quite there. As Aki and Alex suggested, I whisked the gums and sugar with the egg yolks, tempered the cream into the yolks, and then cooked the custard to 65 degrees (60 is the minimum to hydrate the gums). I strained the custard, poured it into my flexi-mold and baked it in a water bath just like I would a normal crème brûlée. After it was finished baking I put it into the fridge overnight to set. When I tried to unmold it the next day, I found that the gel was strong enough to hold the shape but was too brittle and did not have as much flexibility as I wanted. Also, the mouthfeel of the custard was just plain wrong. The gums left a slick, almost greasy feeling in your mouth.

To address these issues I cut the amount of k-carr and LBG by half, though I knew that this would weaken the gel. However, I also knew that I needed to add something to give it the flexibility I was looking for. To address both of these issues I settled on two changes. First, I substituted 1/3 of the sucrose with dextrose, which would add to the flexibility of the gel. Second, I added a small amount of gelatin, which would also increase the flexibility and would provide the additional gel strength. The gelatin would provide structure and also has the benefit of a better mouthfeel and flavor release.

Why didn’t I use only gelatin? Gelatin by itself would make it more like a panna cotta texture than a crème brûlée. I feel that the combination of the gums and the gelatin give me a gel that can stand up on the plate but isn’t too far from the texture of a traditional crème brûlée. Another reason to leave in the k-carr and LBG is because I decided to freeze the custard in the mold and the k-carr should protect the custard during the freeze-thaw cycle, though I haven’t tested this hypothesis. Finally, the last change I made is to just cook the custard on the stovetop and skip the baking step. The reason being that I think the baking of the custard might weaken the gelatin, though I haven’t tested this hypothesis either. The final result was just what I was looking for. Once the custard thawed on the plate, the gel was firm enough that it maintained its shape and the texture was soft and very much like a traditional crème brûlée.

So, now that I had the custard right, I set to work on the other components of the dish. The burnt sugar was made with raw cane sugar, which I spread on a silpat and burned with a propane torch. After it cooled and hardened I was able to lift it off in pieces. The strawberry fluid gel was a simple strawberry puree set with agar agar and then blended in a vita-mix. The caramel was made by cooking sugar to a dark caramel stage and then adding strawberry puree and balsamic vinegar. The cilantro, to be honest, was added just because the plate needed color and that was the only herb I had in the house. I don’t have access to micro-greens, otherwise I would have used something like micro-basil.

Well… what do I think of the results? I like it and I don’t like it. I like the texture of the custard. I like the acidic counterbalance of the strawberry-balsamic vinegar against the richness of the custard. However, I don’t like how it looks, which is too severe. The shards of sugar sticking out and the zebra-like stripes of caramel across the plate are the two things that bother me. There was one thing I didn’t like when I tasted the dessert. The pieces of burnt sugar were a little too thick and there was too much of it on the plate; it wasn’t in balance with the quantity of custard.

So, now I have some things to fix. I already have ideas of how I want to address the issues: the visual aspects of the plating and the thickness of the burnt sugar. I also want to experiment with some of my theories: k-carr stabilizing the freeze-thaw cycle and the gelatin unable to withstand baking of the custard. Stay tuned for the next iteration!