Carla Makes Coffee Crème Caramel

[serene orchestral music]

It will seem like nothing is happening

and you will become very bored

and you will become perhaps worried

that nothing will ever happen.

You will lose faith,

you will lose patience,

and you may lose your resolve.

And that is when you're gonna lose.

You need to stay in it.

So stay observant.

Stay nearby.

Keep your eyes on what's happening in the pan.

We are looking for...

[dramatic orchestral music]

I'm gonna make a recipe from my book.

This is my book.

It's called Where Cooking Begins.

The recipe is more important than that.

It's for coffee creme caramel.

It was in the book.

This was one of my favorite photos.

Love.

And then we also put it in the magazine

because I just work in a really great

and supportive place and it looks like that.

Not to toot my own horn, I did develop it,

but I just like love this dish so much.

It's creme caramel but it's coffee flavored.

What else do you have to say?

And if you're asking yourself what is creme caramel,

it's flan, it's cooked custard.

It's just one of life's most delicious and wonderful things.

And my inspiration for the actual flavor

of what I wanted this to taste like

was Haagen-Dazs Coffee Ice Cream,

which is, with all due respect

to every other brand of ice cream,

I think is the standard-bearer.

Quarter cup of coffee beans.

The recipe, I don't know who wrote this thing,

said to coarsely chop it.

I know why I did that in the book

because I didn't wanna call for a mortar and pestle

in case you don't have one.

So if you don't have one,

coarsely chop your coffee beans

or like wrap them in a clean dish towel

and smash a heavy pot on top of them

to just break up the coffee beans.

And the reason that you're doing that

is because you just want more surface area.

[coffee beans crunching]

And it gets the oils and all the aromas are going.

It smells so good and coffee-ish.

You know what else I love?

Chocolate-covered coffee beans, aw.

Little bit broken up

so the inside is outside

and more surface area.

This part of the custard base doesn't have any eggs.

This is just the milk, sugar,

lemon zest, coffee.

While I'm talking about all these things,

there's the milk.

And I'm basically making like coffee milk

with the sugar,

and I'm just gonna start off the recipe

by infusing all of these flavors into the milk.

If you were making a regular creme caramel,

it might just have [phone ringing]

vanilla bean.

Whose phone?

Oh my God.

[Coworker] Sorry, it's our lunch.

[Carla laughing]

And then this is a fresh vanilla bean.

When you're buying vanilla beans, if possible,

you wanna like feel them.

A really fresh, nice vanilla bean,

it should be pliable.

If you didn't have a vanilla bean,

you could use some vanilla extract.

And I'm pretty sure we gave a quantity for that

in the recipe, but I would say,

I don't know, one to two teaspoons?

But once you get the vanilla bean open,

you wanna use the knife

and scrape out the seeds from the inside.

You're gonna see those seeds in the finished dish.

But if you don't scrape them out, sometimes,

even though they're in with the liquid and everything,

they kinda just adhere to the pot

and they don't like go freely everywhere

that you want them to be.

And I'm just gonna bring this up

until it comes to a really bare simmer.

It's not about like cooking it.

Oh, that's the clicky burner.

This is my favorite ice cream of my childhood.

Haagen-Dazs coffee? Haagen-Dazs coffee.

Well, did you let it get to like soup?

Well, that was my dad. [Carla laughing]

He doesn't have great teeth.

All right, you can see the lemon zest

swimming around in there.

That's gonna come to a simmer.

I guess we can wait, I don't know.

How's your pancake?

Not doing great.

[Carla laughing]

I mean, this has some caffeine in it, no doubt.

Story of my life right there. [woman laughing]

That is literally the story of my life.

[Coworker] Do you want the quarter sheet tray?

[Carla laughing]

I mean, it's hot now, we just need to cover it.

So if you don't have the right size lid

for your pot at home like we don't have here,

just put something else on top.

It's already off.

That's gonna steep for about half an hour

to let all the flavors develop,

and in the meantime, we're gonna make the caramel

and let that cool down,

and then it'll be all ready to come together.

It's like, you should know how to make your own recipes.

It's just good to check, you know?

I don't wanna misspeak.

Mmhmm, lots of great advice in here.

All right, these are my caramel ingredients.

Lemon juice, sugar, water.

The pie plate you want nearby

because as soon as the caramel's at the right color,

you don't wanna be running around the kitchen

to go get the pie plate.

You gotta go right into the pie plate.

[Coworker] Why do you have lemon juice?

Okay, lemon juice, secret ingredient.

Let's talk about it.

It's not a secret, but it is a really key

and like helpful ingredient.

Come over here.

Actually, I wanna put that over the heat.

All right, [whimsical music]

I learned while working at Bon Appetit,

because we were working on a caramel for some story

a hundred thousand million years ago,

I had to like read up on caramel

and learn about why sometimes sugar will crystallize

and seize instead of browning.

And I'm not gonna get into the nitty-gritty

'cause I truly don't understand it,

but what happens is the sugar crystals

want to recrystallize.

They wanna stay together.

And if you add certain ingredients

to the sugar in the water mixture,

so here's the water going in,

and it's really just enough to like just moisten

and dissolve the sugar.

There are certain ingredients that you can add,

such as lemon juice,

that will break up whatever those chains are

and make the sugar not link back up together.

Corn syrup, corn syrup will also,

because it's a different type of sugar,

it's a liquid sugar,

it'll interrupt that crystallizing process.

I went with lemon juice

because I'm already using lemon zest

in the coffee mixture.

So at this beginning stage,

just make sure before you turn the heat up

or let anything simmer

that the sugar is totally dissolved in the water.

A good way to tell is from tilting the pan.

As the liquid sort of sheets across the bottom of the pan,

you can see the crystals holding back

and sticking to the bottom of the pan.

And the other way to tell is that the liquid itself

will go from being more cloudy to clear.

Practice makes perfect,

so I'm practicing patience every time I make caramel.

So it's really getting there.

The liquid is really much more clear now.

I can see all the way to the bottom of the pan.

As soon as the sugar is dissolved

and the liquid is at a simmer,

you don't wanna be stirring anymore.

You can swirl the pan every now and again,

but again, the more you stir it,

the more you encourage the crystallization.

And so this kind of,

you just have to go in a hands-off mode.

Caramel is a risky business,

and you have to stay committed,

committed to the caramel.

So it is clear white right now

and I'm taking it to mahogany brown.

I'm taking it to the point where little wisps

of smoke are gonna come up,

but then when it starts to change,

things happen very quickly.

That's why you want your pie plate.

You're not climbing around in the cupboards right now.

You're not

[doorbell ringing] answering the doorbell.

I mean, you could answer the doorbell.

Yeah, if you have a TV in the kitchen, turn it on.

But what about the guy

who was winning everything on Jeopardy!?

That was very, did you hear about him?

Had one of those beautiful minds.

[Coworker] Beautiful mind,

that would be a great, boring thing to watch

as you're trying to do-- [Carla laughing]

Any movie with what is that actor's name?

[groans] Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe.

Didn't he throw a phone at someone?

Another thing that is very pleasing to me

and puts me at ease is that there's no,

when a caramel is screwed up

and it's not going to crystallize,

you can tell at this phase.

There are warning signs.

It will look soapy.

I'm not as worried about it

because we did the lemon juice trick.

Let's smell the coffee mixture.

Ooh, it changed color.

Speaking of changing color,

the coffee mixture looks coffee-ish now.

I didn't drink coffee for a long time.

Like 10 years, I didn't drink coffee.

And then one day, I was like why am I doing this to myself?

Coffee's amazing.

Still too pale.

[Coworker] Do you have a Def Leppard story

you can tell in the meantime?

I wish.

It's a great color.

It's not there yet, though.

Another wisp of smoke.

I'm really pushing it.

It's very close, people.

I mean, I'm really just gilding the lily now.

I don't know, that looks good.

It doesn't just look good, it smells good.

Okay, so now with my non-dominant hand

aiming towards the camera,

I'm gonna pour the caramel into the pie plate

and tilt the caramel to coat the whole bottom.

But if you just pour in the middle,

it will spread out on its own.

And this is hot stuff, guys,

so don't pour it on your hands.

And I wanna coat the pie plate

and come a little bit up the sides as well,

and it happens really fast.

It looks gorgeous.

Now it has to cool down,

so I'm gonna get it away from the stove.

Pick from the side.

What I did, I tilted up

and then I put my little fingies underneath.

It's fine, I'm fine.

I'm gonna...

I just want it rewarmed.

It's gotta be very warm, not yet simmering.

Sure wish I could crack two eggs at once.

What is the difference between flan and creme caramel?

I don't know.

I think they're the same.

It's just like whether you're in France

or whether you're in Spain.

But I think it's kind of the same.

All right, so I'm just whisking the eggs

a little bit.

I'm not trying to incorporate air.

In fact, we're trying not to incorporate air.

Coming over here, move the thing.

It's not quite there yet.

This is very hot.

Okay, so now, a little bit of the tricky bit.

You wanna beat, again,

you're not beating the crap out of these eggs,

but you wanna keep moving them around

and adding the hot coffee milk mixture,

and this is gonna bring the temperature

of the eggs up gradually so they don't scramble.

And you don't want this boiling.

Again, you're not trying to scramble the eggs.

You just wanna warm.

And then from here,

we go through a strainer.

I will surely make a mess.

Look, I picked it up and there was just a mess there.

It looks like Haagen-Dazs coffee color, doesn't it?

Just getting the rest of this to go through impatiently.

Could I wait, would it drain?

Yes, it would.

So there are still gonna be little bits

of powdery coffee dust in there.

You're gonna see some specks also from the

vanilla bean, and that's all good.

The other thing that has to happen

is that this needs to cook gently.

And so I'm setting up a water bath.

This is a perfect fit.

Oh my God, looks beautiful.

So it's easier to do this in here

rather than fill the custard base into the pie dish

and then try to lift that whole thing up.

And then the other thing that has to happen

in here is hot water.

And so again, that's like

gonna create a very gentle heat method

where the hot water is acting as a buffer.

This is how you get like a really custardy,

velvety, smooth creme caramel.

And I just wanna stop before I get up to the very edge.

Although all the vanilla's down there.

Okay.

[tense music]

I'm gonna do a,

you know the expression a slow walk?

Oh my God.

It's a slow walk.

It's okay if the custard goes into the roasting pan.

It's not okay if the water goes into the custard.

All right, she's in.

And I'm gonna pour in enough.

Very hot, this came to a boil right before we did this.

Little bit more than halfway up the sides.

Cool.

Stay hydrated.

Okey-dokey, so my timer went off.

I wanna check the jiggle on the creme caramel.

And I'm looking for a slight wobble in the center.

See how when I shake the pan,

you just get a little bit of a wobble?

So even though it wasn't quite the time in the recipe,

this guy's ready to come out.

And I'm gonna let it sit

in the roasting pan with the water for half an hour

so that it gradually cools down.

There's a good amount of carryover cooking happening here.

After half an hour,

I'm gonna lift the whole pie plate out

and let it cool down in the fridge,

and that's minimum four hours,

but you could go up to two days.

So this is the beautiful coffee creme caramel.

It cooled and then it chilled,

if you know what I mean.

The custard, while it was baking,

has adhered to the pie plate.

The caramel is also stuck to the bottom as well.

So in order to get this outta here

so that we have our caramel going everywhere,

I've got to unmold it.

I wanna make sure it's hitting all the way to the caramel.

And then I'm pushing,

but I'm pushing away from my body

and keeping the knife flush with the bottom

and flush with the pie plate,

and we're just separating the custard from the dish.

As soon as you get about halfway around,

you might start to feel like the caramel liquid

is moving a little bit more freely under there,

and it's just 'cause you've broken the suction.

She's free, you know what I mean?

Okay, make sure that you're using a plate

that is a little bit bigger

than the pie plate circumference,

and that also, you wanna make sure that it's got a lip

because there's this really incredible sauce that we made

and we wanna make sure it ends up on the plate

and not all over my apron.

Has been known to happen.

Up and over she goes.

And if it doesn't drop right out,

which I don't know if this guy did.

No, it didn't.

So when that happens, just give a little shaky,

[gasps] and it drops right down

for the big reveal.

Ta-da! [gasps]

Okay, so there's a couple little strips of custard

that were just from my knife.

There's a little bit of air bubbles

around the edge of the custard.

That's totally normal.

It's happened to me every single time I've made it.

Just a very magical coffee constellation right there.

Gaby!

[Gaby] Yeah?

Can you eat some coffee creme caramel with me?

This is like beautiful.

I just love how much caramel there is.

Perfect. It has to have.

Love it, should I go in?

Yeah, let's go in.

And this is the perfect dessert,

which is like, oh my God, I love it.

Yeah, it's like breakfast food.

Thank you.

It's a totally, totally typical

and normal breakfast food. Totally.

In all the lands. Exactly.

Right? Yeah.

Eggs, coffee. Yeah, eggs, coffee.

Love it.

I really hope for everybody

that they're, just in life and in general,

I hope that your caramel sauce flows freely.

Mmm!