Soggy Bottoms: The Ten Thousand Creme Caramels of January

Get ready for Soggy Bottoms’ first fail!

If you asked me yesterday why I picked a creme caramel for my next bake, I could not tell you. My life has been a fever dream of exhaustion, books, period cramps, and shitty family stuff. I think I assumed this would be “easy” and I’m sure it helped that I already had most of the ingredients in my kitchen.

I didn’t have to buy Golden Syrup from Amazon or hunt down anything from a speciality grocery store. It was caramel and custard, two things that I’ve made separately.

What could go wrong?

This is the part where a laugh track would inevitably play over my misguided confidence.

Bake: Creme Caramel

Episode: Series 3, Episode 3

Whose challenge: Mary Berry

Time limit: 2 hours and 45 minutes

Resources: This recipe!

Process: Going into this, I already knew adjustments had to be made. The recipe calls for six creme caramels in smaller ramekins. I own a variety of ramekins, but none that match the size requirements for the challenge. I had four teeny tiny oval-shaped ramekins and two soufflé ramekins. I thought the latter would be a bit better, but a single deeper ramekin meant I had to adjust both the ingredient amounts and cook time.

The recipe calls for full fat milk, which what? Googling told me a lot about fat contents in American milk, but nothing that confidently told me what the U.S. equivalent would be. I went with whole milk. Was that the right move? I honestly have no idea.

The caramel came out well! I think the trickiest part to caramel, though, is having to babysit it. Seriously, if you even glance away from it, you’ve burned the entire thing.

But let’s get to the real fuck up that made this entire recipe inedible. Yeah, that’s right. I said inedible. I literally spit out my first bite into my sink.

If you look at the picture and you have any experience with custard, you will immediately see the problem. It’s overcooked, which means it tasted like vanilla flavored scrambled eggs. Because the cook time was based on smaller dishes, I had to wing it and monitor the creme caramel as I added more and more time to the base 20-30 minutes.

And then I got wrapped up in my book and assumed that setting a timer for 10-15 minutes at a time would be fine AND allow me to read some good chunks for Aurora Blazing in between. It also threw my time constraints right out the damn window, but sometimes you just have to say fuck it. With all the resting and cooling the creme caramel had to do in general, I knew staying under three hours was a lost cause.

The only good thing I can say about my creme caramel is that at least it looks good? I was able to take some great photos before shoving the entire thing down my disposal.

RIP creme caramel. We hardly knew ye.

Reading material: The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow.

Because this was a big of a fail, my reading recommendation is based on what a successful creme caramel would, in theory, taste like. As I’ve stated before, this book is absolutely gorgeous. I had such a sense of awe while reading because the writing is so beautiful. That’s kind of how I felt flipping out my creme caramel from its ramekin.

If you’ve ever had custard, there’s this smooth creaminess to its texture. I know this sounds weird, but it’s like eating silk. But also, don’t actually eat silk, please. That smoothness matches the effortless way the story unfolds in Ten Thousand Doors with January as the intrepid and adventurous narrator.

And also, a custard, on the outside, looks kind of boring and bland. You often can’t tell from the outside what sort of flavor it may be or if it hides a surprise in its center. January’s life is much like that: seemingly ordinary until she discovers other worlds hidden behind equally ordinary doors.

You can see the rest of my Soggy Bottoms’ bakes here or see the full list in the Soggy Bottom introductory post.

Let’s all take a moment of silence for my creme caramel.