Creme Brulée with Verbena

I couldn't find verbena - looked everywhere. So we substituted 1/2 tsp vanilla. This recipe made a very creamy and delicious creme brulee. They cooked up perfectly, and had great texture. Because we didn't have verbena leaves to strain out, we didn't bother to strain out the lemon zest.

In this recipe, the sugar topping is made of brown sugar. We had a lot of trouble getting the sugar to melt rather than burn. We tried both a torch and the broiler. I wonder if regular sugar would work better?? I'd love to hear any suggestions you might have.

This was prepared by my 16 yr old son as homework for his French class (lucky us!).