I Raise You Crème Anglaise
The easiest way to make an unremarkable dessert something special
Dessert can be a little formulaic. It’s almost invariably something sweet - fruit, chocolate, etc. It’s often pretty boring even when you’re paying 10 bucks for a slice of cake.
I’m not a pastry chef by any stretch of the imagination. My culinary school studies were focused on the savoury side of the kitchen, with occasional forays into the world of the pâtisserie and the boulangerie. And it made sense: knowing how to grind out bread, puff pastry or a pie dough has its uses for even the most grizzled line cook.
But the sad fact is that many restaurants can’t afford to have full-time skilled pastry chefs, which is why menus are often filled with cheesecakes, lava cakes, and crème brûlée. These are things often made elsewhere and brought in, finished with a few berries and sprig of mint (ugh!) and marked up even more than a fancy cocktail. Your server isn’t asking you if you want dessert because they love you and want you to be happy – they can double their tip with a few desserts and an extra drink or two.
But a little creativity and skill on the part of those grizzled line cooks can make the most unremarkable boxed dessert something interesting, and it’s something you can do at home too.
Crème anglaise is a simple preparation that can make almost any dessert seem fancy. It shines its brightest when it’s matched with a dessert that’s less sweet than the sauce itself. It would be overkill on a frosted chocolate cake, but brilliant on a bread pudding. It would be cloying on a crème brûlée, and beautiful on fresh fruit. It’s often flavoured with vanilla but that’s only a starting point.
And it’s really easy to make. I mean REALLY easy. Milk, eggs, and sugar, and a dash of vanilla.
You’ll need a bowl, a pot, a whisk, a ladle, a spatula (wood is nice) and 250ml/1 cup of milk, 3 egg yolks, 60 grams of sugar (4 tablespoons-ish), and a dash of vanilla.
Warm your milk and a dash of vanilla in the pot. You want it to steam a bit, but not boil. If you have a thermometer around 180F is about right.
Whisk your eggs yolks and sugar together until it’s a pale yellow.
Slowly whisk about 1/3 of your steaming milk into the egg mixture. You’re cooking the eggs without letting them scramble. This is called tempering. You are going to use this skill again, trust me.
Pour the warm-ish egg yolks back into the pot with the rest of the milk. Stir slowly over medium heat with your spatula. My school textbook suggests a figure 8 pattern. I don’t know if it matters, but it gives you something to do.
Keep stirring. Somewhere around 155F (if you are measuring, but you don’t need to) the foam will disappear. The mixture with thicken and seem almost oily in texture.
It’s done when you can draw a line through it on the back of your spatula. You can lick your fingers here - that’s how you know it’s made with love.
Pour it into a heat safe container. If you see a few eggy bits pour it through a strainer. Press a little plastic wrap on the surface so it doesn’t form a skin, or rub the surface with a little cold butter on the end of a fork.
(Hey, aren’t there some similarities to making béchamel? You bet there are!)
Your crème anglaise will keep in the fridge for a few days. Forget that hot sauce slogan– you can put this shit on everything. Fruit? Yes. Pancakes? Of course! Crappy cake mix cupcakes? Yup. Directly from squeeze bottle to mouth? I won’t judge.
And if you think it tastes more than a little like melted ice cream, you’d be right. Crème anglaise is the basis of all those old-fashioned ice cream recipes your grandma used to make. So don’t get fixated on vanilla. Drop a few pods of cardamom in the warming milk. Stir a little juice off your defrosted strawberries into your mix. In one notable (and rather fun) culinary school experiment I let a few branches of Thai basil infuse my cooling cream. With some lemon meringues I had a pretty unusual take on the classic French île flottante. Why not, right?
So when your family and friends ask you if you made the dessert you can look them square in the eye and say yes, even if it is a Costco cheesecake. You took something boring and made it extra special – how cool is that?