There once was a girl who met a boy and they fell in love. Not only did they love each other so very much but they also loved sharing their love of Creme Brûlée together. Oh, what a decadent and romantic dessert to share. So delicious that crispy burnt sugar topping combined with that smooth velvety custard. They loved it so. Then one day in this new year that boy decided that starting in the month of February he was going to go dairy-free and gluten-free. This wasn’t really an issue until that girl realized that smack dab in the middle of the month of February was a certain day known as Valentine’s Day.
Whaaat? Yup, that meant no enjoying of any Creme Brûlée for them! That is until that girl spent an afternoon in the kitchen (while that boy played with the kids!) perfecting the most delicious DAIRY-FREE Creme Brûlée. Yes, she did! That boy loved that girl even more that day (and that girl loved that boy even more too for watching the kids!) and they lived happily ever after 🙂
Dairy-Free Creme Brûlée
Recipe Type: Dessert
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 4-6
Ingredients
- 1 can coconut milk
- 5 egg yolks
- 1/2 cup sugar plus 1 tbsp for each ramekin
- 2 vanilla beans
Instructions
- In the bowl of an electric mixer whip together the egg yolks and sugar until the egg yolks are light in color.
- Pour the can of coconut milk into a small saucepan and heat on medium-low.
- Cut each vanilla bean in half lengthwise and scrape out the vanilla bean pulp with a knife.
- Whisk the pulp into the coconut milk.
- Once the coconut milk is simmering take the pan off the heat and slowly pour a small amount into the egg yolk mixture while mixing, this will help temper the eggs.
- Then continue to pour in the remaining coconut milk mixture and mix until well combined.
- Place 4-6 ramekins in a shallow baking dish and fill each with the coconut mixture.
- Pour hot water into the baking dish so that the water is halfway up the ramekins and place the dish into an oven preheated to 325 degrees.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes or until the custard is set but slightly wiggly in the middle.
- Let cool.
- Once cool, sprinkle one tablespoon of sugar over top each custard-filled ramekin and, using a butane torch, heat the sugar until brown and crisp.
- Serve immediately.
First off, you will need 5 eggs yolks. We are lucky enough to get farm fresh eggs from a good friend that come in a variety of egg sizes and colors. The kids love to see what color eggs we get each time, it’s always a fun mystery!
You will need to use one can of coconut milk for this recipe. Use the full-fat milk and not the low-fat or lite variety for best results!
PS. My husband is not a huge coconut eater/lover and he really loved this Creme Brûlée…there is only a very slight taste of coconut in the first bite and then it’s just all Creme Brûlée goodness after that. If you increase the vanilla you may find the coconut taste gone altogether.
You will also need 1/2 cup of white granulated sugar as well as a few extra tablespoons for the ramekins in order to make the crisp sugar topping.
I used two vanilla beans, cut in half and scraped the bean pulp out with a knife. If you do not have this ingredient readily available just use a teaspoon or two of vanilla extract instead!
Pour the coconut milk into a small saucepan along with the scraped vanilla bean pulp and heat on medium-low heat until just simmering.
Next place 5 egg yolks into the bowl of an electric mixer along with 1/2 cup of sugar and mix until the egg yolk become lighter in color. Once that happens, grab the just simmering coconut milk and pour just a little in and mix it well. We need to temper the eggs so that they don’t scramble when meeting a hot liquid. Once the coconut milk mixes in, continue to add in the rest of the milk until well combined. It may be a bit frothy on the top and you can scrape that off if you’d like. I usually leave it on and scrape it off once in the ramekins.
Place 4-6 ramekins into a shallow baking dish and pour the coconut milk mixture evenly into each one.
Then pour hot water into the baking dish until it is halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Very carefully place the baking dish with ramekins into an oven at 325 degrees for 30-35 minutes.
You will want the custard to be set but upon shaking the ramekins it should jiggle just slightly in the center. Let cool or refrigerate until ready to eat.
Once cooled or you are ready to eat, grab you butane torch. Mine looks like this…pure awesomeness…gotta love a manly kitchen tool 🙂
Sprinkle one tablespoon of sugar over top the custard in each ramekin and slowly burn the sugar until it’s nice and browned and crisp.
Then grab a spoon and crack that beautiful sugar shell you just made and take a big ‘ol bite of the smooth custard and crispy sugar combination that will be dancing around in your mouth.
Oh! Just look at that crunchy sugar top…that velvety custard…pure heaven!
The perfect romantic dessert, no?
And dairy-free!!
Enjoy!
XOXO,
It looks delish!
Hugs
Julie
Looks yummy!! My daughter is allergic to dairy so I look forward to more yummy things from you, Thanks.
Have you tried this with any of the other nondairy milks out there? My husband is very strongly anti-coconut and I’m sure he would object even if it is only a taste at the beginning.
I have not Seanna…I think in order to make it nice and custard-y you will need to use a non-dairy milk high in fat. Not sure how well soy, almond, or rice will do as they are much more watery. If you try them let me know how it goes!
I didn’t know I could reply to individual comments, but I commented below regarding creme brulee using soy milk.
Wow, what a great idea! LOVE coconut milk.
This looks awesome!! Could it be modified by using soy milk? I am allergic to coconut, nuts, and cow’s milk, so soy is really my only alternative.
I’m not sure, I haven’t tried it with soy milk yet. My one concern with soy milk is that it is fairly watery. If you try it let me know how it turns out!
I didn’t know before that I could reply to individual comments, so I commented below regarding creme brulee using soy milk.
Wow, you’ve solved a mystery for us. My wife loved creme brulee, but both of us stopped eating dairy two years ago. Ideas, ideas, ideas are spinning in my head. 🙂
Fantastic! My daughter is dairy intolerant, and cutting out dairy myself so I could feed her has made me dairy intolerant too now. I’ve been experimenting for the past year with dairy free baking and cooking, and have successfully conquered many ‘dairy’ staples, such as fudge, rice pudding, quiche and lasagne, but haven’t tried a creme brulee yet – this looks fantastic! Thanks so much for sharing
http://makey-cakey.blogspot.com
(There are a bunch of dairy free recipes on my blog too)
Thanks for the great recipe! I don’t have a butane torch, manly or otherwise, but I don’t think I’ll let that stop me from making these. I might add coconut extract instead of vanilla, because we both really love coconut!
Oh wow! I gotta try this, especially if the coconut milk can help overpower the eggs. 🙂 PS how is the dairy/gluten free month going?
We do little dairy in our house and i love this dish. As soon as I get back into a real kitchen again – I’m going to try this! Thanks!
Seanna, Stacey and anyone else asking about soy: I’ve also successfully made creme brulee with soy milk.
The baking time is relatively long, I think because soy milk has very little fat (when I make it with cream and/or milk, the cooking time correlates directly with the amount of fat.) You should also tent it with foil because it will develop a skin if you don’t.
(I only did this once, and it was one serving soy, the rest a combo of milk and cream, all flavoured with lavendar. The soy serving took on an excessive amount of green colour from the steeped lavendar, but was otherwise a success.)
This is great to hear! Thank you! Did you have to use a lot more eggs as well to up the fat content…curious!
Perhaps I am a little over fat conscious with my desserts, because not only do I not use all cream in my dairy version, but I also use whole eggs. I did want to compensate for the loss of milk fat in my soy version, but I still didn’t go all yolk. I was scaling the recipe down by volume to one portion, and it was less than one egg so I spooned out the excess white to get the volume I wanted. Thus, the egg in the soy version was yolk heavy but not devoid of egg white.
I didn’t get to compare since I only made the one soy serving for my friend and she wasn’t going to taste the regular one. She certainly felt it was silky and creamy enough, but if your tastes run more decandent, by all means go all yolk, or try extra yolk!
Anyway, my general recipe for about 8 small servings is
4 cups of some kind of milk and/or cream
1 cup of egginess (whole eggs and/or yolks)
4 tbsp sugar for the custard (I like less sugar in the custard to highlight the sweetness of the bruleed sugar more.)
1 rounded teaspoon for bruleeing, per custard cup serving
(method much the same as your above recipe, though I do a 350 oven unless it’s convection, in that case 325.)
Revisiting what I said about cooking times in my first comment, I was surprised how long your all yolk, coconut milk version took. I think my half milk/half cream, whole egg version takes about half an hour, and all cream takes about 15 minutes. The soy version took close to an hour. Perhaps there is more to cooking time than just fat content.
I meant to add earlier, that for extra manliness, you can use the propane torch from the hardware store. Same one I use to repair the plumbing 😉
This just changed everything! I’ve been extremely anaphylactic to dairy my entire life, and have always had limited dessert options. Finally something delicious and NORMAL! Thank you!
I swap the milk in my cakes for soy milk all the time for the same friend I made soy milk creme brulee for, and it has never been a problem.
Regarding soy substitutions: I used to buy it from the regrigerator section, where the cartons are typically 2 L, but I got tired of having to drink so much after using 1 cup or so for a cake, so I looked at the soy milks that are sold not refrigerated like UHT milk (to be refrigerated after opening,) since they come in smaller cartons. I was surprised to find that the UHT ones have fewer additives! Even for the same brands, the refrigerator section ones usually had multiple texturizers to give the milk more body, but the UHT ones were typically just filtered water and soy beans, and maybe fortified with extra vitamins and dietary minerals, but none of the texturizers.
Thank you so much for sharing. My husband is lactose intolerant and it is so difficult to make yummy desserts he can eat.
Looks great! Can this be done without the torch somehow? Maybe a lit match?
Sure! You can put them under your broiler for 5-10 minutes, turning often and watching very closely so the sugar does not burn!
Thanks so much for posting this! Since going grain and dairy-free I figured I better just get over the fact that I would never taste that fantasticness that is creme brulee so I’m super excited to have found this recipe. I’m going to make this as soon as a I get a chance!
I didn’t try it yet,but I have to cuz I’m allergic to dairy and gluten. I love it all though. Thank you Maggie!