Milk Chocolate Crème Brûlée
Easy chocolate crème brûlée recipe with milk chocolate - using less sugar, half and half (milk and cream) to lighten it up and without a water bath. Serve with passion fruit for a delicious flavour combination.
Equipment
- 5 shallow ramekins 4oz (9cm/120ml) x 3cm (1 inch) height (see NOTES)
- kitchen torch optional but for best results, otherwise use grill/broiler
Ingredients
- 400 ml (14 fl oz/ 1 ½ cups) Light, half fat cream 15% fat (or 'half-and-half')
- 110 g (4oz) milk chocolate (good quality couverture, at least 35% cacao)
- 4 egg yolks organic
- 30 g (2 tbsp) granulated sugar
- pinch salt fleur de sel
For caramelising
- 4 tablespoon granulated sugar or brown cane sugar ('Cassonade' in France)
Instructions
- Preheat a cool oven to 120°C/250°F (100°C fan/Gas ½).
- Gently heat the cream and milk chocolate in a saucepan until the chocolate has just melted (don’t boil) and whisk until smooth. It should look like hot chocolate. Take off the heat.
- Stir the yolks, sugar and salt in a bowl until creamy. Pour the creamy warm chocolate over the egg mixture and stir until well combined.
- Pour into individual shallow ramekins and place on a baking tray. Cook gently in the oven for about one hour. Leave on the counter to cool, then chill for at least 2 hours in the fridge covered with cling film - even better, overnight.
- Just before serving, blot gently the surfaces with kitchen paper if there's any condensation from the fridge. Then sprinkle with the sugar, caramelise them quickly with a blowtorch or 2 minutes under a very hot broiler/grill.
Notes
To serve: delicious served with passionfruit or with raspberries.
Chocolate: I use milk chocolate for the texture and have cut down the sugar accordingly. You could replace with dark chocolate but it will change the texture. I do not recommend making this with white chocolate as it's too sweet.
Note on sugar: as using milk chocolate, I have reduced the sugar content, otherwise the crème brûlées would be too sweet.
Approximate nutritional information per serving: 22g fat; 32g carboydrates; 6g protein.