Gingerbread Creme Brulee

This Gingerbread Creme Brulee is a rich, silky smooth custard infused with the holiday flavors of cinnamon, cloves, ginger, nutmeg, molasses and vanilla.

My family has quite a few traditions around the holidays, most of them very casual and fun. With my mom’s side of the family, we go bowling every Christmas Eve.

At home on Christmas Day, we lounge in pajamas, watch Christmas movies, and make a nice dinner, like salmon stuffed with crab or my lasagna with cottage cheese recipe.

Because that evening tops off nearly two days straight of eating and drinking, I try to keep dessert simple and small. This gingerbread creme brulee is rich, but served in small mason jars for a nice balance.

And it wouldn’t be the holidays with just classic vanilla bean creme brulee, or even lemon creme brulee. This one is full of cinnamon, cloves, ginger and nutmeg – all of those great gingerbread flavors everybody loves.

What you’ll need for this gingerbread creme brulee recipe:

• heavy cream – I use heavy whipping cream for this recipe (and most creme brulee flavors), and that’s it. Some people use a combination of cream and milk, but if I’m splurging and making creme brulee, I like it extra rich (cream is also what I use to make my microwave caramel sauce decadent).
• granulated sugar – you’ll need this for both the custard and for sprinkling on top to torch.
• egg yolks – you’ll need the yolks of 4 large eggs for gingerbread creme brulee. Serious Eats has a bunch of ideas for what to do with leftover egg whites.
• vanilla extract – be sure to use a good quality extract for this Christmas creme brulee.
• molasses – it wouldn’t taste like gingerbread without this key ingredient.
• gingerbread spices – we’ll be using cinnamon, ginger, cloves and nutmeg. If you happen to have pumpkin pie spice on hand, you can use 2-1/2 teaspoons of that in place of the individual spices.
• kosher salt – just a pinch. The finished dessert won’t taste salty, but it will taste balanced.
• blowtorch – you can use a specially made kitchen blowtorch, or just one from the hardware store. I use the full size hardware store kind.
• ramekins or creme brulee dishes – you’ll need four 1/2-pint mason jars, or ceramic ramekins or dishes that are oven safe and will hold at least 6 ounces of liquid.

A note about ramekin size:

Size DOES matter for creme brulee ramekins. Not only will you need four 6 ounce ramekins (or half pint mason jars), but you’ll need to pay attention to the shape of them and how it will relate to the baking time for this recipe.

If your ramekins are wide and shallow, your custard may bake a little faster. If your ramekins are narrow and deep, you will likely need to bake your custard longer.

In the photos you see in this post, I’m using mason jars that I would consider narrow and deep. My custard took about 39 minutes to bake until it was just set (the middles still trembled slightly, while the custard was set on the outer edges).

If you use wide and shallow ramekins, start at 25 minutes and continue baking, checking every 5 minutes until your custard is just set. 

Some tips for torching Christmas creme brulee:

First of all, you want to be sure to get an EVEN layer of sugar across the surface of each custard.

I sprinkle the tablespoon of sugar across the custard as evenly as I can, and then I kind of tilt and shake and shimmy the ramekin until it’s even more evened out.

Once you start torching the sugar, it’s important to remember to keep the torch moving constantly so none of the areas burn.

Personally, I’ve found it easiest to brown the sugar of the Christmas creme brulee in stages. Meaning, first I torch the entire surface of the sugar until it is light golden brown.

And then I go back and keep torching until everything is medium golden brown. And then again until it’s all dark golden brown.

As soon as you start to smell any sugar burning, stop torching immediately (a keen sense of smell is even more important with brown custards like this one, and chocolate creme brulee). Dark brown sugar is delicious, but burnt sugar is just bitter.