unsure

variation

4s

smoked

pseudo choc

blinded

serving crème brulee in banquets has always bothered me a little, well maybe more than a little. by the time they are all burned and then served the sugar crust always starting to go soft. it can be prevented in smaller functions but when the numbers go up it become more and more of a challenge to serve quality.

one alternative i have been using is to make a plaque from croquant and place it on a bar of custard as pick-up begins. this has worked great and allowed for different flavors of sugar/croquant to be used… for example milk chocolate custard and yogurt croquant. in abu dhabi things are a little different. the humidity is so bad here that even isomalt will melt in a matter of minutes. the sugar plaques have not been able to hold, even when stored with silca.

after doing several large functions that had crème brulee as a component on a plated dessert, and having brulee that did not even resemble crisp, it was time for a new solution. a technique that i have used in showpiece work became the new approach. crystallizing syrup placed into a flexipan and left to sit overnight creates a beautiful, thin and crisp disc. the real beauty is that crystallized sugar is not affected by humidity making it pefect to our environment.

crystallizing syrup:

• 425 sugar
• 165 water

  combine, boil, pour into mold and leave to sit overnight

the original idea was to make the syrup using caramel but that is still under development as caramelized sugar does not re-crystalize. the real point to this post is not about this old technique. it is about a simple discovery that was obvious but new to me as i was blinded by tradition. when working with crystallizing syrups you are taught that after the disc is removed the remaining syrup needs to be re-boiled to the appropriate density and re-cast to make your next batch. the obvious flaw that i was blind to is the same technique used to make rock candy. if you add a seeds to a dense syrup the crystal will grow at room temp without heating. so after removing the disc i covered the remaining syrup with a thin layer of granulated sugar and left it to set. the traditional technique of boiling an re-casting take 24-48 hours for the disc to form. after covering with sugar i was able to remove a disc in only three hours!