I hope you noticed that the title of this post is Mango and Cardamom Crème Brûlée and Meringue, not Mango and Cardamom Crème Brûlée with Meringue. You have noticed, haven’t you?
Well, basically, although I had no plans to serve the Mango and Cardamom Crème Brûlée with meringue, it was a good way of using up the three egg whites with which we were left with after having prepared the brûlée.
But let me begin at the beginning. As I’ve written in the earlier blog post today, we had Pomegranate Ginger Saffron Braised Lamb Neck, accompanied by roast winter vegetables and mashed potatoes for dinner yesterday. Remains the question of dessert. For as far as I can remember, I have always only had one favourite dish: crème brûlée. Or to be more truthful: my all-time favourite dish was dessert, and my favourite variant of it was crème brûlée. Astonishing only that I waited until now to wish for a blow torch to make my own brûlées for my birthday. Lucky for me, my wish was gratified and Buzz’ lovely sisters gave me my Hotery Professional Chef’s Torch.
Shortly afterwards, Buzz cooked for me, and we decided to make our own first crème brûlée (together, that is – you wouldn’t expect me to leave something so interesting to him alone?). The crème went fairly well, although it took a lot longer to set, and was covered by a top layer of cream that was slightly thicker than the rest. Still, it was enough to convert Buzz to an equal crème-brûlée-addict as I am, and this, then, quickly settled the question of dessert as well.
Normal crème brûlee has been on our menu only three weeks ago, so we decided to go out and explore brûlée-land, making a start with Mango and Cardamom Crème Brûlée. Again, all went fairly well – until we discovered that even after 40 minutes of au bain marie, the cream wasn’t set. There wasn’t much we could do, as we really needed the oven for the roast vegetables, so we shoved them into the fridge and hoped that the cold would do the rest.
Of course it didn’t. The cream was still too liquid, and it was too late to do anything about it anyway. In the end, we had some mandarins for dessert; I baked the meringues over night and we devoured them even before breakfast, and we’ve given the crème brûlée a new bath this morning and are now waiting for them to cool down.
Has anything like this happened to anybody else? Any other brûlée-experiences?
