Sunday, March 17, 2013

Experimenting on Creme Brulee

Yesterday, I tried my hand on macaron and it turned out pretty good. The thing about it is I only used egg whites, so I now have several yolks sitting in the fridge. What to do? I couldn't just toss them out. So i decided I'll try to make creme brulee / leche flan. Unfortunately, the laziness in me hindered me from making leche flan. Its a more tedious process. You have to make the caramel then the custard and wait till the caramel sits before actually putting the custard then its oven time.

My ama used to make leche flan all the time way back when I was a kid. It was pretty normal at home to have leche flan stashed in the fridge. I found it weird that every one was making such a fuss about creme brulee. After all, the two are almost the same. I'd like to think of leche flan as an inverted version of creme brulee.

Anyway, don't you ever wonder why they started making leche flan in the Philippines? I've been trying to search the net to verify my historical account. After all, it is based on my ama's stories, but to no avail, I couldn't find one. They started making leche flan as an externality of the construction process of churches and other stone buildings back in the Spanish Era. The Filipinos were forced to work through polo y servicios and egg whites were used as an adhesive for the building's walls/foundation. Egg yolks would have no use in the process and would most likely be thrown out. But the Filipino trait of not wanting to waste anything, especially food, paved way to develop the leche flan making process in the country.

Going back to my creme brulee experiment, the process is to mix the yolk with some sugar and temper it with heated vanilla infused cream. Put the mixture into ramekins and bake them at 250F for an hour in a water bath. Once they are done, burn some sugar on top and voila! You have your creme brulee (unfortunately, i dont have a torch so i'm skipping the sugar topping).

Economics is really everywhere. Although i am not sure if making this dessert is a positive or negative externality for me. :|

2 comments:

  1. Did you finish the entire bowl?!

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    1. Yup! Its super small lang. 3 inches lang ang diameter! Hehe

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