This
is a truly impressive cocktail to serve to your friends, it delivers
the wonderful Crème Brûlée
flavors
but it's the beautiful caramel garnish that turns this from good to
great.
Directions
for making the breakable, hard caramel garnish are below. You'll want
to practice making the hard caramel garnish a few times - drizzling
the caramelized sugar is a bit of a trick. I used a dessert sized
spoon in the end and started outside my target area as the first drop
is large. When you start moving the spoon the thread thins out - move
too fast and the threads get too thin and delicate, too slow and you
get big clumps. Practice and pretty soon you'll have a pretty lace
like disc. You can always break off nicer areas and drape them inside
the glass too!
The
Crème
Brûlée
Cocktail
1
Oz. Vanilla Vodka
1
Oz. Coffee Liqueur
(I
used Caffe Borghetti)
3
Oz. Heavy Cream (or Half & Half)
Prepared
Hard Caramel Garnish
Ice
GLASS:
Cocktail (martini) or Coupe
TOOLS:
Cocktail Shaker
DIRECTIONS
Prepare
your hard caramel garnish ahead of time, instructions are just below.
Chill
your glass in the freezer.
Fill
a cocktail shaker with ice then pour in the vodka, coffee liqueur and
the cream and shake until well chilled.
Pour
into the chilled glass then place the hard caramel garnish atop the
glass for the guest or customer to break into their cocktail.
Here's
the instructions for making the Hard Caramel Garnish on a convenient
recipe card:
A
little history of Crème Brûlée
The
origins of custards can be traced back to the ancient Romans who were
the first to use eggs as binding agents and employed the techniques
in creating patinae, crustades and omelettes. The dessert type
custards we are familiar with today date back to the Middle Ages
where they were most often eaten like a pudding or employed as
fillings in pastries or binders in tarts - the word custard
is derived from crustade,
a tart with a crust.
There are many claims to the invention of
Crème Brûlée. Trinity College in Cambridge, England claims
they invented the dessert in the 1600's where they called it a
Cambridge Burnt Cream or Trinity Cream, they even have a special
branding iron they use to brand the caramelized topping. Spain
lays claim to a very similar dessert called a Crema Catalana, also
from the 1800s, but it was the French in the 19th century brought
what they called "burnt cream", literally translated as
Crème Brûlée, into the world of modern cuisine.
The
earliest known print reference to it is in a cookbook by François
Massialot's in 1691 but a 1731 edition of Massialot's changed the
name of the same recipe from "crème brûlée" to "crème
anglaise".
Crème Brûlée usually is traditionally
served in individual ramekins then topped with prepared discs of
caramel or sprinkled with sugar which is then caramelized under a
broiler/salamander, a butane torch or by flambéing a hard liquor on
it.
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