Pumpkin Crème Brûlée

Ugh, so many accents and whatnot. That's the last time you'll be seeing the correct spelling with all of the bells and whistles cause I simply don't have the energy for all of that copy and paste action.

I'm not sure whether I should be telling this story, but ahh here goes.

A few weekends ago, Dennis & I went to the Waterfowl Festival in Easton with my mom. We walked around and looked at stuff and it was a grand ole time. It was a lovely day outside, so we stopped to eat lunch at General Tanukis, one of my favorite restaurants.

At this point I should also mention that we had Dexter in tow. So the four of us are sitting at this table with plenty of people passing by. Some people are scared of Dexter and take a wide berth, but others are friendly and want to pet and play with him. Dexter spent his time either drinking water from a bowl on the ground or sitting under the table waiting for scraps. For a few brief moments, he was sitting in a chair but he got a little too feisty so he had to dismount.

Near the end of our meal, Dennis decided to let Dexter sit in his lap. At this point, some kindly old folks stopped to chat and pet Dexter. Oh boy, was Dexter excited!! So excited that he just couldn't help himself and he managed to pee all over Dennis' lap. Dennis yelled some expletives, scaring the old people and my mom... and probably Dexter too. So there Dennis is, covered in pee. It was sad.

The worst part (and the point of this story) is that Dennis really wanted to get some pumpkin creme brulee. We had met up with my dad at General Tanukis the year before and happened upon this delectable dessert during the holiday season. Dennis had spoken of it several times throughout the year, and the second that we got our menus that very day, he checked for and located the very same pumpkin creme brulee. However, once the urincident occurred (see what I did, I combined urine & incident!! he he!!), Dennis said the day was ruined and since we couldn't get the dessert to go, Dennis had no pumpkin creme brulee. :(

He was really bummed out and I was bummed out for him, so I took it upon myself to recreate this dessert at home. He had a terrible day today so I picked a good day to surprise him. He said it was "good." So get ready for some "good" pumpkin creme brulee!!

Ingredients

3 cups heavy cream

1 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

1/2 teaspoons salt

3/4 cups granulated sugar

1/4 cups granulated sugar, additional

8 large egg yolks

1 15 oz. can pumpkin puree

The original recipe actually calls for dark Jamaican rum as well, but I just don't have those kinds of resources, people. Anyway, combine the first 4 ingredients in a saucepan. The recipe says use a 4 quart sauce pan but how big is that? I just used my biggest pan that wasn't a pot, if that makes any sense. So whisk those ingredients together and then put the pan over medium heat until bubbles form around the edge of the mixture. I didn't really know how to interpret that, especially since the bubbles formed in the middle, so I just removed it from the heat when I saw bubbles. Done deal. This would also be a good time to preheat your oven to 325.

While your mixture is heating, you should crack 8 eggs and save those yolks, yall! I saved the whites too, just because I hate waste. I save the smallest amount of leftovers and Dennis makes fun of me, but last time I saved egg whites I ate them for breakfast the next morning so, suck it Dennis. Anyway, mix the egg yolks with the pumpkin puree using a whisk. Once your first mixture is bubbly, slowly mix it into the pumpkin/egg yolk mixture. I didn't do it slowly, I just poured it all in and they still came out fine so take that as you will.

Once your mixture is well blended, you should pour it equally into 12 little ramekins. I should be so lucky. I don't own ramekins so I had to improvise. I bought 2 aluminum cupcake tins, each holding 6 cupcakes. Of course that wasn't even enough... why would Good Housekeeping lie to me? I think I could make about 6 more, so unless you have larger than average ramekins, I would guess that this recipe actually makes 18.

Now here is the tricky part - these ramekins need to be in a water bath. Have you ever heard of that? I haven't but I'm sure there's some amazing scientific reason behind it. You have to place them into a cake pan and then fill the pan with boiling water until the ramekins are about halfway submerged. This presented a problem for me because I decided to use a 9x13 cake pan (ok) and a 9x9 cake pan (not ok). Luckily, aluminum is very bendy and I was able to fit 8 into the big pan and 4 into the small one. Here's a terrible picture:

See how it's all bendy on top? Also you can't really see the water on top, but on the bottom one you can see the reflection of the oven rack above.

The recipe says cook at 325 for 30-40 minutes, but I cooked the smaller one for 40 and the bigger one for 35. It wasn't strategic or anything, it just took me 5 whole minutes to situate my "ramekins" in their water bath in the larger one. Sheesh.

The recipe says to remove the ramekins from the water and let them cool to room temperature, then refrigerate for at least 3 hours. I, of course, cut corners and put them straight into the fridge. After approximately 3 hours (probably less) I took 2 out and sprinkled "1.5 teaspoons" of sugar on top. I have no idea how much it actually was. I put the broiler on high and moved a rack up to the top space in the oven, then put the ramekins in for 2 minutes. They were pretty awesome.

Here's my finished product with a few bites taken out of it. Oops. Didn't grab my camera fast enough. The muffin pan thing worked out pretty well. I'd do it again. I'm going to take the leftover batter to my mom's house this weekend and pray that she owns real ramekins. She is like, Martha Stewart incarnate, so she will definitely own ramekins. She called Martha Stewart a prostitute a few weekends ago, but that is a story for another time.

The original recipe is from the Good Housekeeping site. Ciao!