Recipe: Maple peanut butter creme caramel

buttercup

Ok, I promise this is the last creme caramel recipe (unless a really great one comes along - ha!), but it was too much of a fundamental twist not to pass it along.  It also goes to show the value of following a hunch, no matter how weird it may seem.  We were tossing ideas around about a peanut butter creme caramel at work and the idea came to me about instead of incorporating the peanut butter into the custard, to use it in the "caramel" part - I was wondering if it was possible to pull it off without actually having any caramel at all, but a peanut sauce instead.  I happened to have a little of our regular custard on hand so there was nothing to do but to do it.  I instantly went with maple syrup as a sweetener and it would also help loosen the sauce up.  The real trick as I saw it was to maintain that definite line between the custard and the "caramel", so I used the freezer.  Since peanut butter is inherently sticky, I wanted to make absolutely sure the "caramel" would release from the bottom of the cup, so I brushed it with a little butter first and stuck it in the freezer.  

maple peanut butter

Worked like a charm!  A tiny bit of butter made it's way to the top during the cooking, but a little dab with a paper towel dealt with it.  The flavour was great, instead of having a muted peanut butter flavour in the custard, having it as the sauce delivered the full power of the peanut butter in all its glory.  Of course, for plating, we went with the classic PBJ and banana combo - strawberry "jam", caramelized bananas, and a cinnamon puff pastry stick as the "toast".  Of course, now that we've managed a departure from using caramel in a creme caramel, we opened up a whole can of worms, but I'll be content sitting on this for a moment.

For this experiment, I was using the half milk half cream custard, but the all cream recipe would work just as well.  Again, this will do 10 to 12 portions depending on the size of cup.

fill with custard

You will need:

as needed              butter for the cups

as needed              smooth peanut butter

as needed              maple syrup (#3 is best)

500ml / 2C            milk

500ml / 2C            cream

8                            eggs

142g / 5oz             sugar

10ml / 2tsp            vanilla

Method:

 - brush the bottom of the cups with a thin layer of melted butter and place in the freezer to harden

 - whisk together maple syrup and peanut butter at least 50/50, but more syrup makes the sauce more fluid

 - put a generous tablespoon of the maple peanut butter in each cup, and tap it down to cover the bottom

 - freeze again

cook nice and slow

 - put the milk, cream and vanilla in a pot and bring up to a simmer

 - whisk the eggs and sugar together

 - temper the cream into the eggs

 - strain the mix

 - set the oven to 275F / 135C

 - set a pot of water on to boil

 - fill the cups with the custard

 - place the cups in a high sided pan

 - pour the water in the pan 3/4 up the sides of the cups

 - place the pan in the oven with a loose cover

 - cook for 1 3/4 hrs to 2 hrs until the custard no longer jiggles loosely

 - remove from oven and cool completely

 - dab any butter from the top surface with a towel

 - to serve, place the cups in warm water to loosen up the sauce

 - run a knife around the edge, then turn out onto a plate

peanut butter, jam, banana and toast - what's not to love?