Coffee-Cardamom Pot de Creme

Page 256

Cuisine: French | Course Type: Desserts

(1 review)

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Recipe Review

I was halving this recipe which made things a little tricky as it called for 7 egg yolks and only 3/4 cup sugar, divided. So I ended up trying to make caramel from a 1/4 cup of sugar to which coarsely ground coffee beans and cardamon pods were added. Probably a bit easier to do with a full recipe I'm thinking.

Since I didn't cut the cooking time by enough, my result was more pudding than pot ... BUT the flavour was pretty darned good although -- and I never say this -- it could have been a little bit sweeter.

Boulud suggests pairing this with a dark sweet sherry, which I did, and he was spot on about that.

I think this would be an excellent dessert following a Spanish or Middle Eastern main dish.

(1) useful  

Comments

Queezle_Sister - 25th September 2012
Sounds fabulous! We have one little chicken, who lays little eggs - it makes producing 1/2 an egg possible!

aj12754 - 25th September 2012
Lucky you having a chicken!

If you are interested in making this, turns out Serious Eats has the recipe.
http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2008/01/baking-with-dorie-daniel-bouluds-coffee-cardamom-pots-de-creme-recipe.html

I plan to try this again making a full recipe, but I do think that it makes sense to make the caramel first, add the cream, then add the coarsely ground coffee and cardamom and infuse for 20 minutes or so. I think the coffee and cardamom added to the sugar you are trying to caramelize just unnecessarily complicates matters. And you run the risk of having a burnt coffee-cardamom flavor rather than a coffee-cardamom flavor.

Although, yes, I do realize that Daniel Boulud knows more about this than I do and must have his reasons.

(edited 25th September 2012) 

Queezle_Sister - 25th September 2012
Thanks for that link - so interesting that it was from Dorie Greenspan, doing Daniel Boulud's recipe. The comments were also interesting - and brought up a question - green or black cardamom? I think my pods are green, and this goes on the list for a calorie extravagant dessert!

And yes, aj, having chickens is amazing. They not only give me the best tasting eggs ever, they eat up the leftovers that languish in the refrigerator - easing my guilt about food waste!

aj12754 - 25th September 2012
Dorie is the co-author on the Daniel Boulud cookbook.

I was happy to see in the comments on the recipe that other home cooks had a little trouble with caramelizing the sugar with the coffee and cardamom in there.

By the way -- she also has you put the boiling water in the pan after it is in the oven -- which I think is more of a pain than it needs to be -- I pour the water in and then pop it in the oven -- I cannot imagine that it makes a difference.

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