Happy Chol Hamoed! You’re probably stuffed, but I think you can make room for some dessert:
I’ve been known to browse the internet for hours, reading recipes and adding them to my ever-growing Things To Make list. Most things are on that list forever for a long time, but not this recipe!
Right after I read this recipe, I was invited to a friend for Shabbat lunch, and excitedly replied, “I’ll bring dessert, hope you’re serving dairy!” She confirmed that she planned on a dairy lunch, and I didn’t stop talking about this pudding all week. Poor David.
Sometimes I am so excited to make a specific recipe. I’ve even been known to plan dinner parties around recipes that I’ve wanted to try, only to end up being a bit disappointed in them. I was confident that this pudding would be a winner, mostly because it won Food52’s You Best Pudding contest, but also because it just looked awesome.
This dessert is perfect for a dairy Shabbat lunch; you make it the day before and it has to be refrigerated for 3 hours or overnight! It was meant to be! BUT you know what else it’s perfect for?! You guessed it: Passover!! Everything in here is a kitchen staple that’s already K for P, so if you’re not in the mood for chocolate, there’s still no need for gross boxed coffee cakes this year.
So get cooking! But first, make sure you have some ramekins (four small ones or one big one) . I don’t, so I made a pudding loaf. Whatever, it was still amazing!
Burnt Caramel Pudding from Midge on Food52
Serves 4, but if you don’t serve it in individual ramekins you can stretch it out to more servings, like I did.
Ingredients:
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1/2 vanilla bean
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 tablespoons water
- 3 large egg yolks, room temperature
- Fine sea salt or kosher salt
Directions:
- Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F.
- Pour the cream into a small saucepan over low heat. Split vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the cream; toss the scraped pod in there too. Gently warm the cream, stirring occasionally.
- Reserve 2 tablespoons of the sugar; pour remaining sugar and 1 1/2 tablespoons water into heavy-bottomed saucepan and set over medium heat, stirring until sugar dissolves. Then crank the heat to high and let the liquid bubble away — don’t stir; just swirl the pan occasionally — until it turns dark amber. This takes about 4 minutes, but watch closely because it happens fast.
- Moving quickly, fish the vanilla pod out of the cream and save for another use. Slowly stir the warm cream into the caramel over medium heat. Once it comes to a boil (it will fast), turn off the heat and let the mixture cool for about 10 minutes.
- While the mixture is cooling, whisk the egg yolks with the rest of the sugar and a pinch of salt in a medium bowl. Whisk the cream/caramel mixture into the egg yolks a little at a time until it’s all incorporated.
- Strain the mixture into a pitcher or large measuring cup and pour into four 6-oz. ramekins or one large one. Place the ramekins in a shallow pan half filled with cold water. (Sprinkle a few grains of sea salt on top of each one.) Cook at 300 degrees for about an hour. Chill overnight (or for at least 3 hours).
