Depending on the egg size, this recipe may vary a little
Yeilds: 12
6 cups cream
4 vanilla beans
16 egg yolks
1 cup sugar
1. heat cream with vanilla beans, scald -- till almost boiling. Remove from heat and set aside for 30 min. -- infusion but you can also scrap the vanilla beans for the same effect. Remove vanilla beans
2. Beat eggs and sugar in a bowl until thick and pale.
Now you can do one of two things
a) Add cream then pour in a pan over low heat and stir until mixture thickens. Do not boil otherwise you mixture will curdle -- the eggs coagulate or cook. The mixture just needs to coat the back of a spoon. I think you are cooking it too long. Now you pour into your brulee dishes and let it set in the fridge before carring on.
b) Add cream to egg mixture and pour into brulee dishes. Place in a hotel pan with a little water in the pan. Bake at 300 for roughly 1 1/2 hrs to 2 hrs. Till the custard set. Make sure there is always 1 inch of water in the pan at all times. I find it helps set the custard unformly
The baking is better because you are not adding direct heat onto the eggs but at the same time you have to find the sweet spot for the temperature of the oven. Try this method once and it will tell you if your oven was too hot or too low. Do not use a convection oven for this as it will dry your brulees out. Also, it may be neccessary to cover your brulee for the first 20 min to get the process going, Ive had to do this on certain occassions when the person who made the mix didn't do it properly.
Most importantly, write everything down so you know what you did and so you can repeat it or try something else.
Good luck
Whenever we cook we become practical chemists, drawing on the accumulated knowledge of generations, and transforming what the Earth offers us into more concentrated forms of pleasure and nourishment.
