Sasha's Kitchen: Papaya Glazed Creme Brulee - Happy Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day!  I'm going out for dinner with my husband for Valentine's Day tonight, but first wanted to share our dessert from last night's home cooked dinner.  I've been doing a lot of creme brulee torching lately, and as you can see, I am not quite ready to be done yet.  It occurred to me that in addition to flavoring the creme brulee custard, like I have done with my other brulees, I could create a fruit sugar glaze on top of the creme brulee and caramelize the glaze, as long as it had a sufficient sugar content.  Thus, I decided to create some fruit glazed creme brulee desserts.  

This dessert is perfect for a simple Valentine's Day dessert, as long as you have a creme brulee torch.  If you want to be especially romantic, you could even use heart shaped creme brulee dishes like these.  I don't have the heart shaped dishes, so I made mine using my regular creme brulee ramekins.  It's been so cold and snowy here on the east coast, that I wanted to create a Valentine's Day dessert with a taste of the tropics, so I went for a papaya glaze using fresh diced papaya from my local market.  I also flavored the creme brulee with my homemade amaretto, rather than vanilla.  I made such a large quantity of amaretto that I expect to continue to find new and fun uses for it in my desserts.

Sasha's Valentine's Day Papaya Glazed Amaretto Creme Brulee (Makes 4)

1 1/4 cups heavy cream

4 egg yolks

1/4 cup sugar (for custard)

1/2 cup fresh papaya (or the fresh fruit of your choice - strawberries would be great too)

3 T amaretto liqueur

1/4 cup sugar (for the fruit glaze)

First, prepare the custard by mixing the sugar and the heavy cream over medium heat until all of the sugar is dissolved and bubbles form around the edge of the saucepan.  Take off the heat and beat in the egg yolks and the amaretto.  Place in ramekins.  Put the ramekins in a broiling pan surrounded with hot/boiling water going up halfway on the sides of the ramekins.  Bake at 350 F for 25-30 minutes until just firm in the tops (you can test with a toothpick).  Chill for several hours.

To make the fruit glaze, puree the papaya and mix with a quarter cup of sugar.  Heat for about five minutes on medium heat until the sugar melts and it thickens to a jam-like consistency.  Coat the chilled custard in the ramekins with a layer of the glaze (don't make it too thick or you will have to brulee forever) and sprinkle the tops with fresh sugar.  Use your creme brulee torch on the tops until caramelized.  This will take a bit longer than with a conventional creme brulee, but is totally worth it.  Enjoy this taste of the tropics while you cope with the snow this Valentine's Day.

Other Fun Creme Brulee Dishes on A Kitchen In Brooklyn

Banana Brandy Creme Brulee

White Chocolate Creme Brulee

Pumpkin Creme Brulee

Sasha's Kitchen: Papaya Glazed Creme Brulee - Happy Valentine's Day

Sasha's Kitchen: Valentine's Day Dessert: Red Raspberry Souffle

After making my Chocolate Souffle with Raspberry Chambord Cream Sauce over the weekend, I was inspired to make another souffle using raspberries.  Raspberries have long been one of my favorite fruits since the days when I was growing up in Upstate New York and would go to a local orchard and family run fruit farm, Hurd Orchards to pick our own berries.  Fresh berries in the summer (and even the winter too) are one of my favorite foods.

Even though raspberries are far from being in season right now, I thought that the raspberry - in all its tartness - would make the perfect light and airy souffle that wasn't overpoweringly sweet.  I was right - the final result was a lovely, light souffle in the most beautiful shade of pink imaginable.  It tasted like a adoring raspberry kiss.  

The souffle was surprisingly simple to make, once you get the hang of making and baking a souffle down.  You could also try this recipe with strawberries, but I think that would not turn out as well because it would be too sweet.  Another option, which I did not try this time, would be to add half a teaspoon of lemon juice to the recipe, because the tartness of lemon goes so well with raspberries.  Here's what you will need to make 3 souffles.  You can obviously double the recipe if you would like to make more.  It's like indulging in a kiss of pure airy raspberry goodness.

1/2 pint of raspberries

2/3 cup of sugar

2 egg yolks

3 egg whites

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 350 before you begin.  Spray three ramekins with PAM and sprinkle them with sugar,  You will need to have the oven preheated and ready to go by the time you are ready to put the souffles in or they will not rise properly.  Puree the raspberries in a Cuisinart or other food processor and mix with the sugar in a saucepan.  Heat for a few minutes over medium high until the mixture thickens and the sugar dissolves.  If you like, you can then add 1/2 a teaspoon of lemon juice.  Remove from the heat, mix in the egg yolks, and strain to get rid of as many of the seeds as possible.

Next, beat the egg yolks and cream of tartar until it forms stiff peaks, by beating on high with your stand mixer.  You can follow my instructions from the Dark Chocolate Raspberry Souffle here.  Gently fold in the egg whites.  Bake the souffles at 350 for about 20 minutes.  Put on your oven light to watch the souffles rise, but do not open the oven until you are ready to take them out, or they will collapse.

My husband, a big fan of the dark chocolate souffle, wasn't so sure about this one before I made it.  I had to do a bit of convincing.  However, he ate it in about 20 seconds and devoured every last bite!  I recommend serving the souffle with a side of Eric's homemade Vanilla Ice Cream.

Sasha's Kitchen: Valentine's Day Dessert: Red Raspberry Souffle

Eric's Kitchen in Jersey City: Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream (Valentine's Day Special)

My girlfriend Jenn loves ice cream. Every summer the Wallis Run United Methodist Church, located only a few miles from her childhood home in Lycoming County, PA, would have an ice cream festival to raise money for the church. The members of the church would make home-made ice cream. Vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, and banana - and people would come to indulge and to socialize with friends, family, and neighbors. You could also purchase containers to take home. Jenn's favorites were the banana and the vanilla. There is nothing like home-made vanilla ice cream; it doesn't taste anything like what you buy in the store. Last year for her birthday I bought an ice cream maker and this past weekend I made vanilla ice cream. She said It turned out just as delicious as during the ice cream festival she grew up with!

I think part of the reason it turned out so well was that we used a real Tahitian Vanilla bean instead of the artificial vanilla extract. Jenn's parents went to Tahiti last summer and sent us 3 vanilla beans that supposedly keep for up to 13 years if stored properly. From what I read online about them the best way to tell if they are still good is to smell them. Unfortunately we had been keeping it with our other spices and it was near the curry and chili powder... So it smelled like curry. At first we were worried that we'd have vanilla-curry ice cream, but since it was wrapped up and you have to cut the vanilla bean as shown above to scrape out the goopy-seeds, I guess it was protected from the curry fragrance and it turned out fine.

My ingredients were as follows:

3 cups of heavy cream
1 cup whole milk
3/4 cup of sugar
4 egg yolks
one vanilla bean

This makes about one quart.

First you combine the milk, cream, and sugar in a saucepan and heat it slowly while stirring. You want the mixture to get warm but not boil as it can curdle the cream and milk. Then you whisk the egg yolks and while whisking, pour in about a cup of the warm mixture to temper the eggs and keep them from cooking too quickly. Jenn's sister Laura was in town this past weekend and taught me all about this process. I think this is actually what happened the first time I tried to make ice cream and why we tasted the eggs which was a little odd.

Once the egg yolks are in you add the seeds from the vanilla bean which I have pictured to the right. These are the small black specks you see in good vanilla ice cream that lets you know it was made with a vanilla bean and not the fake extract which many times contains vanillin that is chemically treated to taste like vanilla instead of real vanilla beans. You want to split the bean length-wise and scrape out the seeds with the back of a knife.

After your mixture is warm enough and you've stirred in the seeds enough that they separate somewhat (I still had a few tiny clumps in mine) you want to let the mixture cool in the fridge. I also added the bean pods to the mixture and let them infuse while cooling for a few hours although it probably didn't need all that long. The next step is to take out the bean pods and add the cooled mixture to the ice cream maker for 25-30 minutes. At this point it will look a bit like a milkshake so you can put it in the freezer for a couple of hours to let it harden a bit more.

I wanted to make something a little more crazy and creative but I also wanted to be able to perfect something as simple as vanilla ice cream since my first attempt was a more ambitious raspberry pomegranate gelato and it didn't turn out to my liking. Below I added a picture of a sundae using the ice cream, mainly because it was pretty but want to note that you lose some of the taste of the vanilla once you add the chocolate sauce.





Vanilla Bean

Eric's Kitchen in Jersey City: Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream (Valentine's Day Special)

Sasha's Kitchen: Valentine's Day Dark Chocolate Souffle With Raspberry Sauce

Dark chocolate souffles have long been one of my husband's favorite desserts.  So, when we had some guests over a month or two ago for a dinner party, and their contribution to dinner was making us four delicious chocolate souffles, he was thrilled.  I promised that I would replicate the feat at some point.  Since souffles are one of our featured recipes this month on A Kitchen In Brooklyn, I figured that now would be a good time to make him his favorite dessert with a bit of a raspberry twist.

I love raspberries and think that chocolate and raspberries make the perfect combination.  Coffiners (my husband's family) are the opposite.  Most (but not all) of them don't really care for raspberries at all.  However, my husband is the exception.  With a little prodding, I convinced him that he should eat his dark chocolate souffle with my raspberry Chambord cream sauce, and it worked.  He loved it!

When I decided to make a raspberry chocolate souffle, I was torn between preparing a chocolate souffle with a raspberry sauce or a raspberry souffle (yes, it would be that lovely pink color) with chocolate sauce. In the end, I decided to do both, but start with the former.  So, there will be a straight-up raspberry souffle coming your way soon.

The first step in preparing this recipe is to prepare a dark chocolate souffle.  Like Emily mentioned in her soup post yesterday, I am also not good at following directions; I never was.  As a kid when asked to color inside the lines in a coloring book, I never did - I drew my own picture.  I'm still that way - I prefer doing things my own way, which occasionally gets me into a bit of trouble.  However, souffles can be a little tricky, and unless you have made a lot of souffles, it's usually good to follow some sort of recipe, at least as a guideline - so even I am actually encouraging following directions here.  If you do things a little off (i.e. not enough egg whites, open the oven in the middle, fold in the egg whites too hard etc.), your souffle will not rise, or worse, will make a mess.

I looked at a number of recipes, before deciding on how to prepare the souffles.  A lot of the recipes I used made quite a bit more souffles than I was interested in, or had proportions I was not crazy about.  Based on all the recipes I looked at, I came up with what I consider to be a very basic dark chocolate souffle recipe.  I used the darkest (60% cocoa) chocolate pellets I could get my hands on at the grocery store.

Individual Dark Chocolate Souffles (Makes 4 servings in ramekins)

5 oz bittersweet dark chocolate (pellets or chips work best)

2/3 cup milk

1/2 T cornstarch

2 egg yolks

3 egg whites

1/4 tsp cream of tartar

1/6 cup of sugar; plus more for souffle ramekins

Raspberry Cream Chambord Sauce

4 oz raspberries, pureed

3T sugar

1/2 cup heavy cream

1 tsp cornstarch

2 - 3 T of Chambord Raspberry Liquor

First, spray 4 ramekins with PAM and dust with sugar.  Preheat the oven to 400 degrees and place the ramekins aside on a baking sheet.  On one burner, heat a large pot of water (to construct a double boiler - you could just use a regular double boiler if you have one).  On a second burner, combine the milk and the cornstarch over medium heat and bring to a boil, and stir until it thickens.  Once thickened, turn the heat off.  Melt the 5 oz of bittersweet/dark chocolate in your makeshift double boiler and combine with the milk mixture.  Transfer to  bowl and mix in the egg yolks.  Set this aside, and concentrate your attention on the egg whites.

Getting the egg whites right is key.  If you do not get the result that I describe here, you should discard the egg whites and start again until they are just right.  If they are not fluffy stiff peaks in the end, your souffle will not rise, and the entire experiment will be a waste of time.  It's happened to the best of us, but if you follow these instructions, it should work out.

Put the egg whites in the basin of your stand mixer.  Add the cream of tartar and beat for a minute or two until foamy.  Then continue beating, on the highest setting there is, while gradually adding the sugar (1/6 of a cup - fill a 1/3 measuring cup halfway).  Once the sugar is added continue beating for about three minutes, until shiny stiff peaks form.  The result should be nice and fluffy and it should form a stiff pointed peak when you test the consistency with a fork or spoon.

Next, gently fold the egg white mixture into the chocolate mixture.  Gently!  Don't beat it in, just fold gently with a spatula.  If you are too rough in doing this, the souffle won't rise as well.  However, fold enough to make sure the mixture is mixed in full.

Fill four ramekins.  Then place in the oven right away (it is really important to have the timing right with a souffle, so make sure the oven is fully preheated by the time you get to this point).  Bake for about 13-15 minutes (watch using your oven light) until they have risen fully.  Don't open the oven until you are ready to take the souffles out no matter how impatient you are (I did this once and the souffle collapsed and was a disaster).

Have the raspberry cream sauce ready when the souffles come out, because they will fall in a matter of minutes.  To make the sauce, puree the raspberries and mix with the cream, cornstarch and sugar over medium heat until it thickens.  Add the Chambord and mix on the heat for another minute or two.  Allow to cook before using, because the hot chocolate souffle tastes great with the chill raspberry sauce.  By the way, the sauce is featured in a bowl that I made in a potter course I took last year.

Serve the souffles immediately (they will fall in a couple of minutes, but still taste great) when they come out of the oven with the raspberry sauce, and some fresh raspberries. My husband happily devoured two of these in a matter of minutes (seriously)!

We should have more souffle posts coming up this month from everyone here, but if you are in the mood for a dinner souffle, click here for recipes for a spinach souffle and sweet potato/apple souffle.

Sasha's Kitchen: Valentine's Day Dark Chocolate Souffle With Raspberry Sauce

Sasha's Kitchen: Creme Brulee A La Bananas-Brandy (Valentine's Day Special)

I have, not surprisingly (since I usually can't resist some experimentation) started to get creative with my creme brulee torch, and after my regular creme brulee, pumpkin creme brulee, and white chocolate creme brulee, I am not nearly ready to call it quits yet.  I decided to prepare a fruit-based creme brulee to experiment with the brulee technique and flavors.  I should add that in the summer, I plan on doing the same recipe using fresh peach puree.  I figured that as long as I could keep the same egg and cream based formula, that banana puree would still make an excellent brulee as long as the mixture was basically a custard that congealed when baked.  This would allow me to top with sugar and brulee the tops with the creme brulee torch to caramelize the sugar.

This recipe was a huge success.  It tastes like a banana custard or pudding that has a brulee top - just perfect, although certainly not traditional for creme brulee at all.  It was, as my husband Brad described it, fuller and richer than the pumpkin creme brulee I prepared.  Banana puddings and custards are among his favorite desserts, and this was basically a rich and creamy banana pudding with a brulee top of caramelized sugar.  Thus, this recipe, which I invented on the fly, was a winner.  Brandy is the perfect alcohol to complement bananas, and the taste here is very subtle in balancing out the sweet fruit flavor of the bananas.

Sasha's Creme Brulee A La Bananas Brandy

1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 medium sized banana, pureed
3 teaspoons brandy
3 egg yolks
1/4 cup sugar plus 1/2 a teaspoon or so for each top

To prepare this recipe, follow my recipe for the regular creme brulee.  Mix the heavy cream and vanilla and the brandy and heat until small bubbles form around the edges, and the sugar is dissolved, as I explained in my other post.  Then, in a separate bowl, beat the egg yolks, vanilla and pureed banana.  Mix the cream mixture with this mixture.  Divide into four ramekins.

Bake the creme brulee in a metal tray filled halfway up the sides of the ramekins with very hot (almost boiling) water, as described in my previous creme brulee post.  Bake at 300 F for approximately 30 minutes until the tops are set.

Allow to chill for at least and hour or two, until topping each with sugar and using your creme brulee torch to caramelize the tops of the brulees.  This is creamiest, best banana pudding with the lovely caramelized flavor on the tops.  I consider it a genuine creme brulee since it still contains the cream, egg yolks and the brulee top.  It is the perfect finale for a Valentine's Day meal.

Stay tuned for my next two posts on miniature food - mini key lime cheesecakes, and mini vegetable frittatas - both which will be perfect for your Valentine's day brunches.

Sasha's Kitchen: Creme Brulee A La Bananas-Brandy (Valentine's Day Special)