Having just returned from Corpus where we go to see my mom, as usual, we stay with the friends who I have mentioned several times. They treat me like their daughter and Randy, well, Hal, who is 90 bends Randy’s ear about the oil field surveying business. Hal still goes to work everyday and Jane cooks non-stop. She is 80 and has so many of the best old cookbooks that I love to look through as we sit and talk in the evening. I copied several of the recipes that caught my eye. Frosty loves crème brulee and I love chocolate, so when I read this recipe, I couldn’t wait to come home and make it. Since we will be having pecan pie and piles of whipping cream piled on pumpkin pie this week, I think I had better hold off since this recipe has lots of heavy cream and 4 egg yolks. Do not want to spend our Thanksgiving in the hospital having our arteries unclogged.
1 1/4 cups heavy cream
1 teas vanilla or 1 vanilla bean
1 (4 oz) dark chocolate, chopped
4 egg yolks
t Tables sugar
4-6 Tables sugar for topping
Preheat oven to 300. Mix cream and vanilla together in a double boiler. Heat mixture for 10-15 min and stir in chocolate. Remove vanilla bean if that is what you used instead of extract. Whisk egg yolks and sugar together in a mixing bowl.. Slowly pour chocolate mixture into egg mixture, continuously stirring.
Place bowl over simmering water (which was under the chocolate mixture) until cream mix thickens and coats back of spoon. This takes about 6-8 min. Pour into 4 (4 oz) custard dishes. Place in a large baking pan and add enough water to come up halfway to the sides of the custard cups. Bake until custard is set, about 1 hour. Remove from water and cool. Cover and refrigerate; sprinkle 1 tables of sugar over top of each cup and with a brulee torch, caramelize the top before serving.
Chocolate Castles as wel 