Chocolate creme brulee

This is a dessert to impress — you can match some of the top restaurants with this one. It is important that the oven does not rise above 100C (if it does you may end up with chocolate-flavoured scrambled eggs). If you are a bit suspicious of your oven’s thermometer, place creme brulee in a hot water bath to cook in the oven (at 150C) to ensure even temperature control (as water evaporates above 100C).

You can prepare these up to a few days in advance, just leave them out at room temperature for 15 minutes before brulee torching and serving. If you don’t have a brulee torch you can use a hot grill.

Ingredients

600 ml	Cream (Main)
75 g	Dark chocolate, good quality eating chocolate, at least 70% cocoa, chopped (Main)
6	Egg yolks
2 Tbsp	Caster sugar
6 tsp	Caster sugar, for brulee torching

Directions

1. Put cream and chocolate in a pot. Gently heat until almost about to boil (but do not let it boil). Take off the heat and whisk to melt in the chocolate. Whisk until smooth and the chocolate is fully incorporated (there should be no brown specks of chocolate left). Allow mixture to cool to room temperature
2. Heat oven to 100C. In a mixing bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar together until thick and pale and the sugar is dissolved.
3. Slowly pour the cooled chocolate cream into the egg mixture while whisking continuously until well combined.
4. Pour into a jug (this will make pouring into ramekins easier) and divide between six small to medium ramekins.
5. Cook for one hour until they are just set, but they should still have a slight wobble in the middle. Refrigerate for several hours until set.
6. Evenly sprinkle one teaspoon of sugar over each brulee. Use a blowtorch to caramelise the sugar. The caramel will harden after about a minute

Tips

• If you don't have a brulee torch heat the oven top grill to very hot. Sprinkle sugar over the creme brulee and place under the hot grill with the oven door open.
• Watch like a hawk, as soon as the sugar starts to bubble and caramelise, after about one minute, remove the creme brulee and allow caramel to harden.
• This method works best if the creme brulee has been in the fridge overnight as the grill softens them a bit, put them under the grill straight from the fridge.