Crème Chargers with Gooseberries
Some gosseberries can make the traditional crème chargers even tastier! Use this recipe to impress your family or make crème chargers with gosseberries to serve for dessert even for the most important guests!
Ingredients:
- ½ liter of table cream with fat content of 18% or half-and-half cream with fat content of 10%;
- 1/8 liter (about 1 cup) of sugar;
- 2 yolks from eggs of any size;
- 2 whole eggs larger the better;
- 1 tablespoon of vanilla;
-375 ml of fresh raspberries or gosseberries.
For the topping:
- 75 ml honey or caramel;
Instruction:
Heat the oven to about 160 degrees Celsius (325 degrees Fahrenheit).
Use a saucepan to mix half of the sugar with the cream of your choice. Heat the mixture at medium heat until it starts steaming. Take a heatproof bowl and put there the rest of the sugar with the egg yolks and the eggs. Whisk them until the mixture becomes pale in color. Then start adding the heated cream mixture slowly while still whisking. Add the vanilla vanilla flavor is simply rubbish and will ruin your dish – so don’t even go there unless you really are very poor indeed.
Use a fine-mesh sieve to strain the mixture through and pour it in a measuring cup that has a pouring sprout. Take six chargers dishes or ramekins with capacity of 175 milliliters or eight of them with capacity of 125 milliliters and put the gosseberries or raspberries on their bottoms. Pour the mixture on top of the gosseberries/raspberries in each of the cups.
Put the cups chargers dishes/ramekins into a roasting pan and then put the pan in the preheated oven. Put some water in the pan, but make sure that it does not come higher than ¾ of the sides of the chargers dishes. Bake them until the tops become firm. This should take no more than 40 minutes. The center, however, should remain a bit jiggly. Put the ramekins/chargers dishes on a rack and let them cool for a while. Cover them and put them in the fridge for no less than 2 hours so that they are chilled. You can keep them in the fridge for 2 days tops before they spoil.
Instructions for the topping:
Just before you serve the desserts preheat your broiler if you have one. Use a dry towel to blot the tops of the custards dry. Put a thin layer of sugar on top of each one and add some more if you find it too thin. Broil them on a baking sheet and rotate each one if needed. You can also use a torch to make the sugar bubble and caramelize it. Let the sugar cool for 5 minutes.
Tips:
The best way to make this dessert is by using fresh berries of any kind. Frozen berries tend to be very soft so if you use them the custard might not set very well. Rinse some fresh berries and then pat them dry using a towel just before making the dessert.
Instead of using sugar to sprinkle the tops and then browning each one, you can use caramel syrup topping for the purpose. Take 175 milliliters of sugar and 50 milliliters of water and mix them in a saucepan. Boil the mixture over medium-high heat. You should stir it in order for the sugar to dissolve fully. When the sugar is dissolved you can continue boiling the mixture until the syrup’s color becomes deep caramel. Let it cool so that the bubbles can subside then put a thin layer of the syrup on each of the custards and leave it for several minutes to harden.
The gosseberries in this recipe can also be replaced by pitted fresh cherries. If you choose to do that you can also add 1 tablespoon of amaretto when you add the vanilla.
