Pumpkin Crème Brûlée

What is Pumpkin Crème Brûlée? | 3 Things You Should Always do When Making Crème Brûlée | How to Know When Creme Brulee is Done

Pumpkin crème brûlée made with pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. This custard recipe takes 15 minutes to prep and about 30 minutes to bake. It’s best served cold with a crisp bruleed top.

Pumpkin Creme Brulee with spoons on a dark tray

What is Pumpkin Crème Brûlée?

Pumpkin crème brûlée a French custard dessert that is creamy, rich, spiced beautifully, and has burnt sugar on top to give it that classic crackly topping.

It consists of heavy cream, sugar, salt, egg yolks, vanilla, pumpkin puree, and a few spices. The method for making this recipe is just the same as a traditional creme brulee. The main difference is that we add the pumpkin and spices to the egg yolks, whereas that is not part of the traditional recipe.

pumpkin creme brulee on a dark metal tray

3 Things You Should Always Do When Making Creme Brûlée

First, add half of the sugar to the heavy cream and bring it to a simmer. By dissolving part of the sugar in the heavy cream, it creates a smoother custard.

Second, temper the egg yolks. Tempering means slowly adding hot liquid to the eggs while whisking constantly so that the eggs slowly come to temperature without scrambling.

If you pour the hot cream on the eggs quickly and without whisking, the eggs will most definitely cook or scramble. And that doesn’t make for a very good pumpkin creme brulee, does it?

Third, place two layers of paper towels in the bottom of your baking pan before adding the ramekins and water bath. We do this to create a barrier between the bottoms of the ramekins and the pan. Otherwise, the bottom of the custard will cook quicker than the rest of the mixture.

ramekins of pumpkin creme brulee and spoons on a tray

How to Know When Creme Brulee is Done

The easiest way to check the creme brulee is by giving the pan a slight shake. We don’t want to shake it too much because this could cause the water to slosh into the custard.

When you shake the pan, the custard should jiggle slightly in the center still. If it’s really jiggling, give it another 3-5 minutes and check again.

As a quick note, I use 3-4 oz ramekins when making this dessert. My favorite ones come from Williams-Sonoma, but they are slightly more expensive than you can find on Amazon. But they are from France, and made beautifully, and they have this amazing chic quality.

If you want more for less money and they are still good quality, get these ramekins.

Pumpkin creme brulee with a spoonful taken out

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Pumpkin Creme Brulee

pumpkin creme brulee on a dark metal tray

Pumpkin crème brûlée made with pumpkin, cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. This custard recipe takes 15 minutes to prep and 30-40 minutes to bake. It’s best served cold with a crisp bruleed top.

  • Author: Camille
  • Prep Time: 15 minutes
  • Chill Time: 6 hours
  • Cook Time: 40 minutes
  • Total Time: 6 hours 55 minutes
  • Yield: 6 1x
  • Category: Custard

Ingredients

Units Scale
  • 480 g (2 cups) heavy cream
  • 85 g (7 Tbs) granulated sugar
  • 1/8 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp vanilla
  • 5 egg yolks
  • 58 g (1/4 cup) pumpkin puree
  • 1 g (1/2 tsp) cinnamon
  • 1/8 tsp cloves
  • 1/8 tsp ginger
  • Demerara sugar or granulated sugar
  • A kitchen torch

Instructions

To Make Pumpkin Creme Brulee

  1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Add heavy cream, and sugar to a medium sized pot and bring to a simmer over medium heat.
  2. While the cream is coming to a simmer, combine the pumpkin, egg yolks, salt, and spices in a medium bowl and whisk.
  3. Slowly pour the warm heavy cream into the pumpkin mixture and whisk vigorously until completely smooth.
  4. Pour the mixture into 6 ramekins. Line the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan with 3 layers of paper towels to help the creme brulee bake evenly(see notes above). Place the ramekins on top of the towel, and then put the pan in the oven on the middle rack.
  5. Fill the 9 x 13 pan with boiling water until the water reaches halfway up the sides of the ramekins. Be careful not to let the water slosh into the custard!
  6. Bake for 30-40 minutes, or until the center of the creme brulee is just slightly jiggly.
  7. Remove from the water bath and cool in the fridge for 2 hours. Cover the cooled ramekins tightly with plastic wrap after 2 hours, and then chill for at least another 6 hours or overnight.
  8. When it’s time to serve the pumpkin creme brulee, add a thin layer of demerara sugar or granulated on top of each one, and use a torch to brulee the sugar.
  9. Serve immediately and enjoy. Do not brulee far in advance, or the crackly sugar top will turn soft.

Notes

This is a Baker Street Society original recipe

Keywords: creme brulee, pumpkin creme brulee

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  1. Pingback: Pumpkin Spice Creme Brulee Recipe | Baker Street Society

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