Young Grasshopper: Japanese Soup Spoons

Crème brûlée Spoons

Life has been crazy hectic, I feel like I've been working on this one post for a month of Sundays but it was worth it to share these!

In planning our dessert station for a recent event and I got a little obsessed with the idea of dessert shooters. Then while trying to find the perfect CHEAP shooter glasses online I ended up finding a good deal on porcelain Japanese Soup Spoons.... so my obsession then became what the heck was I going to put in these.... I googled and googled and just didn't find anything that moved me.... until when looking through images of spoons I saw a picture from a site called Decorno.... which really is not a foodie site but apparently the brother-in-law of the blogger is a foodie and he made Crème brûlée in Japanese Soup Spoons for a party.
I was like SHUT. UP.
But, alas no instructions at all. So, back to google but NOTHING. I tried commenting to see if I could get to the brother-in-law some how but nothing.... I found the Brother-in-law featured on another fairly prominent foodie site in a segment about bite size desserts but still no real recipe.... they referenced another Crème brûlée recipe and made a flip comment about just shoving it in the spoons but as I looked at the recipe I thought there is NO way this recipe would translate into spoons, it was a broiler version. I wasn't sure about much but was pretty sure the spoons would need to be individually torched.

Anyhow, enough kvetching.... I decided to wing it and just start cooking. I need to admit that while I have eaten oh-I-don't-know-maybe-a-thousand Crème brûlée in my life I had never cooked one.... I read dozens of recipes and much to my families delight it became a week of nightly Crème brûlées ... ultimately I came up with this recipe. In short, these are little treats are incredible.

NOTE: This recipe made enough Crème brûlée for

100 spoons.... but I only needed 50 ...AGAIN a win for my family!

WHAT YOU NEED:

1 quart heavy whipping cream

1 vanilla bean

1 tsp Madagascar Vanilla

6 egg yolks {large}

1/4 cup regular sugar

approximately 1/4 cup Turbinado sugar for topping

a baking torch :)

WHAT YOU DO:

Preheat oven to 325F.

Set a pot of water to boil, depending on the size of your pan, I'd say 6-8 cups. You will need this for your "Bain-Marie."

Water set to boil, pour the quart of heavy cream into a saucepan; slit the vanilla bean and gently scrape the seeds from inside, add both the pod and the scrapings to the pan and heat over medium high heat, stirring frequently for approximately 4 minutes.

While the milk is heating, in a large bowl, whisk together the egg yolks and sugar. When milk is steamy but not quite to a boil strain the creme into the egg yolk mixture and combine well.

Set up your Bain-Marie: place 2 large ramekins {3.75 inch diameter} in a 9x13 pan and pour boiling water around them so they are about 1/2 way submerged.

Pour your Creme mixture into the 2 ramekins, carefully place pan in oven and bake for 45 minutes at 325F.

Then increase heat to 350F for 15 minutes more, they should be golden brown and look fairly "set" but still soft. Place the Bain-Marie on a heat resistant surface and allow the Creme to cool to room temperature in the pan.

Once cool, you are ready to load your spoons....
I loaded mine and stored on a jelly roll pan in refrigerator overnight {cover with Saran}.
There's no "magic" to loading but they stayed neater
when I spooned the creme into the spoon rather than dipping.