Recipe: Sweet basil crème brulée

Serves four

One pint double cream

Four egg yokes

One to two tablespoons of caster sugar – depending on how sweet you wish it

A handful of washed fresh basil leaves and stalks

Some demerara sugar for the topping

The first part can be done a few hours before the meal or even the day before. Place the cream and basil leaves in a saucepan and slowly bring to boiling point. Whilst it’s heating, in a bowl whisk the egg yokes and caster sugar together until they go a pale cream colour. Using a stick blender (or poring it into a food processor) blitz the basil leaves into the hot cream then strain through a fine sieve. Pour back into the pan, continue heating and as it comes to the boil, pour onto the egg and sugar mixture, whisking all the time. Pour this mixture back into the saucepan and, turning the heat down very low, stir continuously, getting into all the corners, until it begins to thicken. This tells you that the egg yolks are staring to cook. Too much and they’ll start to scramble so if you feel that the mixture is getting too hot, remove it from the heat and continue stirring. Once it’s definitely thickening into a custard, pour into four ramekins – or more if they’re small – leaving room at the top for the sugar disk. Cover the ramekins, allow to cool and chill them in the refrigerator.

The time to produce the hard caramel topping is within an hour of serving. If you do it too far in advance the sugar disk can absorb moisture from the air and soften. I’ve got three different ways of producing the disk.

The traditional but least easy way is to pre-heat the grill until very hot, sprinkle the top of each brulée with demerara sugar and place the ramekin close to the heat until the sugar melts. However, it’s not an exact science with a domestic grill and if it’s not hot enough you can end up cooking the custard underneath before the sugar melts.

In restaurants, a blow torch is the common way to melt the sugar. They can be bought from hardware shops and there are even ones designed specifically for the kitchen. But the ramekin needs tipping as you melt the sugar to ensure it runs evenly over the custard so be very careful of your fingers – and with the blow torch in general!

One easy method I’ve tried is to gently heat the sugar in a heavy pan until it melts, tipping the pan a bit to combine it all. It’ll take ten or fifteen minutes but once melted, immediately pour it on top of the brulées. It will harden in a few minutes and will produce that perfect hard disk on top of the cold, creamy custard. To clean the pan, boil up some water in it until the remaining melted sugar dissolves.