crème brûlée - French Fridays w/ Dorie

I'm embarrassed to post about this one. Should have been fairly easy. In fact I managed to squeeze it in with my 1/2 day at work and finishing up some other holiday tasks, but that appeared to be the problem. As not yet learned from Julia Child, don't put something in the oven and then run off to play tennis. I didn't play tennis, but I did get impatient when the custard wasn't set after close to an hour and consulted another cookbook for baking times. The other book said one hour at 350, so I thought, "let me bump up the temp a bit and get this over with, I have other things to do." So I did, and then forgot to really keep an eye on it and it got a tad overdone. I took them out of the oven as they boiled away, not looking much like crème brûlée but more like something you'd find in a lab. So we went from this:

To this:

See how nicely it separated?

I did wonder about the jam being disturbed when I poured in the custard, but then I wondered if that was the intent. Without seeing a photo, I had no idea, so I'm curious to see what other FFWD followers look like. I actually liked the flavor of the custard but maybe got too sweet from the jam? I'm not a huge fan of sweet, but burnt marshmallow is a different story. So, on with the torch.

Just so happens that we gave our dessert blow torch away recently. I was already to go to the broiler when I realized Alan must have one, and he also doesn't have a problem using it. I do. Ever since I blew up that lighter in 3-d class years ago, I've shied away from them. Alan had read up on the proper way to carmelize creme and learned that you should apply the torch for a few seconds then pull it off, let it cool and do some more. He did great, but the first one didn't officially make caramel but did a nice burn and turned the experimental maple sugar into what tasted like toasted marshmallow.

The good kind that you set on fire and use to melt your chocolate bar. So we all tried it and it was our favorite. You could taste the maple too! The second one was just brown sugar, as the recipe recommended. That one caramelized as it should have, but didn't taste as good. Again, too sweet. I have two more left without any topping. I'm going to try one plain and see how sweet that one tastes and then do the maple again on the last one. Not sure when we'll get to eat it, as well be out of the house again today and tomorrow. Maybe have to try it for breakfast again!