Chocolate Daddy loves him some Lime so we made Lime Creme Brulee

My Favorite Picture of Chocolate Daddy

I call my husband Chocolate Daddy on here because it's fun, and something he jokingly calls himself. For those that don't know me and him in real life we've got lots inside jokes and keep them for like ever. Inside our wedding band there is even one of our many jokes. We don't claim to know everything about marriage and life but we know you need to grow, learn and laugh with each other. Now we've been together almost 5 wonderful years and done some amazing stuff, we've been to Alaska, Vegas, Boston and New York just to name a few places we've been. He's been with me while I've lost two of my grandparents and dealt with my father's health issues. We've welcomed a beautiful baby girl and enjoy everyday together.

favorite picture from our wedding waiting for dinner at Mario Batali's place there.

He works a lot to it so I can be a stay at home mom and write this blog. Back to the name Chocolate daddy, if you've seen the Movie "Get Him to the Greek" then you've heard the song it from but didn't know it. It's a song about making money. We joke about the money he brings in as Units like record sells and have fun with it. You can listen to the song here

I make a lot of things that I think he'll like or enjoy,because of all he's done for us. When we met he wasn't big on some things, lime being one of them. I changed that by saying "Let's get some Cherry lime aid." I didn't know the door it would open, when we're out and about he wants to try things with lime in them all the time and is more willing to try new things having had that door opened to him.

I've made Creme Brulee a few different times but never with lime. I like to think about baking and cooking with the science in it. Alton Brown does a lot of science thinking and explaining with his cooking and teaching. I trust him when trying to learn something new, he's never lead me wrong. Creme Brulee sounds hard and complex but when broken down it's really easy and you get to play with a torch!

all this makes for yum yum later

You need:

• 1 pint of heavy cream
• 1 vanilla bean (whole)
• 1/2 cup sugar (plus more for the torching later)
• 3 egg yolks
• zest of 2 limes

1. 4-Ramekins
2. 13x9 pan
3. Kitchen Torch

Seems easy right, just a few things to make something wonderful!

Pour heavy cream in to small pan. Zest limes into pan. Again I use my wonderful Microplane to make this easy and fast. Split the vanilla bean and place it in the heavy cream with the lime zest.

Now you put this on the stove at a medium heat, you want to bring this to a boil but not burn the cream. So don't try to make this happen fast because like they say good things come to those that wait, and trust me there is a lot of waiting in this. Once you've got that boil pull it off the heat and set aside covered. Set a timer for 15 minutes. You want at least 15 minute to get the flavors infused into the cream.

Now while you're cream is working away, you're going to be busy with your eggs. They don't sell just egg yolks anywhere that I've found so you need to separate them by hand. They sell tools for this and really it's like the whole juicer thing, something I know they make and I don't need. You can do this with the shell, I think it's super easy and less dishes.

I don't need no stinkin' tool

Once you've got your egg yolks in a your bowl, you add your sugar. You want to BEAT the crap out of the eggs and sugar. When you beat them you're looking for them to turn colors, they are going to go to a paler yellow. I do this by hand because you don't want to over beat and you want to make sure it all gets in the beat. Your egg and sugar mix should look like this:

Now hopefully it's been close to the 15minutes you needed to wait for the cream. If not... then it's okay you can get other things ready like the oven at 325 degrees and get your 4 Ramekins ready in the 13x9 pan. You want to get some HOT water and fill the 13x9 pan to about midway up the Ramekins.

water bath!

Next we're going to remove the vanilla bean from the cream at this point I remove the seeds from the vanilla bean by running it thur a fork. It adds more flavors and people will "OHHH and AHHH" at the fact they can see the little black spots from the bean. You will just use the fork to mix it into your cream/zest mix.

Are you wondering if I'm going to make you eat the zest? Nope because next we're going to use a fine mesh strainer and strain this mix into your eggs, but you're not going to mix it all at once because it would of "cook" your eggs so strain a little and beat it with your whisk. You want to keep going back and forth with strain/beat till all your cream mix has been strained.

Here is the start

still working on it

all in just mixing

Once everything has been mixed it's time to pour into your ramekins that are already in the water bath. you want to pour equal amounts into each. Once you've got your cream mix poured you're ready for the oven. You are going to bake them for 50 minutes.

scary oven someday i'll get a shiny new double oven *dreams*

Waiting sucks but like I said you wait a lot for this,but on the good side of things you can make this the day before if you're having company or a get together then you get to show off your torch skills to others. Oh yeah I haven't told you after that 50 minutes in the oven there is still more waiting haha... Also if you haven't noticed I like the torch haha. We bought it to make s'mores with, and Chocolate Daddy won't let me have a full sized torch.

So the 50 minutes is done and you've pulled your Creme Brulee, that's right it's now Creme Brulee. Just not fully set yet. I always give it 10 minutes to cool outside the oven before pulling the ramekins and placing them in the fridge for the next 2-3 hours. They can be kept for 3 days but wrap them after the 2-3 hours. I said there was more waiting.

Yep that's Creme Brulee next to iced coffee and sweet tea

Once you've waited for everything to set it's time to torch, you can use other things like lighters but it's not the same and you can mess things up. You want to use regular everyday sugar, I know some people are all you need blah blah sugar, they lie. Pull your Creme Brulee from the icebox and let it set out for 30 minutes.

just hanging

After waiting the 30 minutes you want to sprinkle sugar on top and shake it around so you have a thin layer so you can get that scorched sugar layer. Time for the torch!!!

Torch!

You're going to set the torch to continuous and start on the outside ring of the ramekin moving in circles towards the center. You want light to medium brown for color on the sugar. Caramelized not burnt.

you know you want to eat it lol.

Now you only have to wait 5 minutes so you don't burn your tongue. You can change this up to have a Lemon or Orange flavor by just using the zest of either in place of the lime zest. This is a wonderful dessert that more often then not is only found in fancy restaurants. I serve it with fruit as this is a very rich dish and you can pick how you pair.

My Chocolate Daddy and our Little Miss moments after she joined our family.

Chocolate Daddy LOVED it and so did our friends who I had try it. I'm always out to try new things and see how I can make them better or easier for others to do. I'm always open to questions and ideas for things to make. Working on a few different ideas for next week and hope I can keep the balance between blog, babe,wife and friend. Now I'm off to make some yummy cookies because it's cold here in Cheeseland.