Sep 12th 2026

Vanilla Crème Brûlée

Classic French Desserts

Crème Brûlée: Custard with Caramelized Sugar

Four ingredients, one torch, and a crack of caramelized sugar that makes people think you spent all day on it. You didn’t.

Crème brûlée has a reputation for being a restaurant dessert, something you order but never make. In reality it’s cream, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla. The only tool that intimidates anyone is the torch, and that part is the easy step.

Most of the work here is waiting: for the custard to bake, then for it to chill. Ten minutes of actual effort, the rest is patience.

What Makes It Crème Brûlée, Not Just Custard

Baked custard exists in a dozen cuisines. What makes this one French, and specifically crème brûlée, is the contrast: a soft, barely-set custard underneath a thin, hard layer of caramelized sugar on top. Break through one texture into a completely different one in the same spoonful.

The custard itself is not sweet. Almost all of the sugar you taste comes from that top layer, which is why getting the caramelization right matters more than most people expect.

The custard is the easy part. The sugar on top is where people either nail it or burn it.

The Recipe

Serves 2. Prep: 10 min. Chill: 30 min. Cook: 35 min.

You’ll Need

A small saucepan, a bowl, a whisk, 2 ramekins, a baking pan, and a kitchen torch.

For the Custard

  • 1 cup (30 cl) heavy whipping cream
  • 2 egg yolks
  • 4 Tbsp (45g) sugar
  • ½ vanilla bean

For the Brûlée Top

  • 1 Tbsp sugar, for coating
  1. Preheat. Set the oven to 325°F (160°C).
  2. Warm the cream. Pour the cream into a small saucepan. Split the vanilla bean and scrape the seeds into the cream. Warm over medium heat just until steam rises — don’t let it boil. Remove from heat.
  3. Combine. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar together. Slowly pour in the warm cream while whisking constantly, then divide the mixture between the ramekins.
  4. Bake in a water bath. Place the ramekins in a baking pan and carefully pour hot water into the pan until it reaches halfway up the sides of the ramekins, taking care not to splash any into the custard. Bake 35 minutes, until the custard is set but still slightly jiggly in the center.
  5. Chill. Remove from the water bath and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, until cool.
  6. Brûlée. Just before serving, sprinkle each custard with sugar and caramelize with a torch. Keep it light brown — any darker and it turns bitter.

The French Way of Doing It

Watch the cream, not the clock. The moment steam starts rising is your cue. Boiled cream can curdle the custard later, so pull it off the heat right there.

Torch it right before serving, not before. The caramel starts softening the moment it hits the fridge again, so this is the one step that happens last, at the table if you want the show.

Crème brûlée also takes well to variation. Swap the vanilla for orange blossom water, coconut, or another extract, and the same base recipe goes somewhere completely different.

Want to Master the Basics Behind It?

Getting a custard to set properly, and knowing exactly when to pull cream off the heat, are the kind of small techniques that make every dessert after this easier. It’s exactly what we work on in our cooking classes.

See Our Cooking Classes

If you like desserts that look harder than they are, our almond financiers follow the same rule, a handful of ingredients, done properly.