Honey and Espresso Crème Caramel

A soft, delicate crème caramel laced with honey and a hint of chocolaty coffee. The honey adds greater depth of flavour to the dish, while the coffee balances the sweetness to add some complexity.

Choose a good honey with a bit of character that isn't overly strong. Orange blossom honey met that requirement nicely, but use whichever honey suits your tastes best.

While I enjoy drinking lightly flavoured coffee roasts with hints of berries and stone-fruit, a darker roast with some heavy chocolate and malt notes goes well in this dish.

Pour whole shots to get the full flavour of the coffee, but don't over-extract and don't add too much coffee to the caramel or it won't set without excessive boiling. This was for 8 ramekins, needing an inconvenient amount somewhere between two and four shots. I only had to throw away a few teaspoons of coffee.

Uncooked, the caramel already approaches the colour of burnt toffee. Don't panic if it starts looking dark.

Try to put about the same amount of caramel in each ramekin, but don't get obsessive about it; if one has slightly more or less, it won't affect the end result much.

Whisk the egg yolks and honey together until reasonably well combined. Don't overdo it; unlike sugar, honey combines easily with egg.

The tops should be golden when they're done. The middle will still wobble slightly when they're moved and might look uncooked, but this sets fully as they cool. Let the crème caramels sit in the fridge for at least 24 hours after they come out of the oven. If you rush, you may find that all the caramel is still solid in the bottom of the ramekin.

Be careful with the knife when cutting the crème caramels free. The appearance of the served dish depends heavily on whether you break up its surface with the knife.

You'll hear the crème caramel coming free from the ramekin and caramel will start leaking out onto the plate. If it doesn't come free immediately, leave it while serving the others, or hold the plate and ramekin together and tap them against the table. Don't shake them, as this will break up the crème caramel.

When the crème caramel has come free, lift off the ramekin. Pour any liquid caramel still in the ramekin onto the dish. If there is still hard toffee at the bottom, don't bother trying to scrape it out; just pour in some hot water and leave it to soak clean.

Voila! Enjoy your honey and espresso crème caramels and use them to impress your friends. Just don't tell them how easy they are to make.

Honey and Espresso Crème Caramels
Yield: 6 x 1 cup ramekins

Ingredients

Caramel

110 g Honey
60 ml Espresso

Crème

600 ml Pure cream
400 ml Whole milk
2 tsp Vanilla Extract*
8 Egg yolks
120g Honey

Directions

Caramel

1. Combine the fresh espresso and 110 g of honey in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Bring to a vigorous boil. Keep at a boil for 5 minutes or until hard ball is reached.
2. Pour into six 1 cup ramekins and allow to set.

Crème

1. Preheat oven to 150 °C (140 °C fan forced).
2. Combine milk, cream and vanilla in a pot and heat over medium-high heat, stirring constantly. Heat to 60°C.
3. Whisk egg yolks and honey in a bowl. Whisking constantly, slowly pour the milk mixture into the eggs.
4. Pour into the ramekins. Place ramekins in a baking tray and fill tray with water up to halfway up the side of the ramekins.
5. Place in oven and cook for 40 minutes or until only just set. The centre will be a similar consistency to set jelly. Remove from oven and allow to sit in the hot water for a few minutes. This finishes cooking the crème caramels without the risk of an unreliable oven overcooking them.
6. Cover ramekins and place in a fridge for 24 hours before serving. To serve, run a knife around the edge of the ramekin, cover with a plate and invert. Caramel will start to seep out from under the ramekin when the crème caramel has come free.

* Most crème caramel recipes call for whole vanilla beans, because vanilla is central to their flavour. The vanilla is barely detectable in this dish, and it would be an unnecessary waste of good vanilla beans to use them here.