Rich, silky vanilla sauce for ice cream, fruit, bread pudding, cakes and tarts.
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There are many different recipes for this standard, basic but oh-so-good custard sauce, but this one comes from one of my favorite cookbooks, “Baking” by James Peterson, a tip from my brother Jasper.
It is not a particularly difficult recipe, but it is alarmingly easy to mess up. As this is a mixture of mainly milk (or cream) and egg yolks, you know what that means: bring to a boil, and it curdles and you can start over. Easily prevented by keeping a close eye on the temperature. The standard test is the spoon test: if you coat the back of a spoon with this mixture and with your finger create a line, the line should hold. A better way is to use a kitchen thermometer. This, the sublime Thermapen, is the one I absolutely love.
Corn starch is a proven method to use as a thickening agent, and I use it in sauces, reductions, when I need something quick and easy. But for this recipe, au Francais, we are going to go classic and hard-core. Eggs only. No gelatin or starch. The old-fashioned way. For some reason, that tastes even better.
Creme Anglaise
Ingredients
- 250 milliliter whole milk (avoid skimmed milk, you need the fat)
- 250 milliliter heavy cream
- 50 grams sugar
- 4 egg yolks
- pinch of salt
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
Utensils
- Heavy pan
- Whisk, wooden spoon, rubber spatula
- Digital thermometer
- Large bowl, cling film
Preparation
- Bring the milk and the cream to a simmer in a heavy-bottomed pan on a medium-low heat. Make sure you don’t bring to a boil.
- In a bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar and salt. Whisk until the egg yolks turn a pale color.
Tempering the eggs
- Pour about half a cup of the hot milk/cream mixture in a thin stream, very slowly into the bowl containing the egg yolk mixture, while you quickly whisk the mixture with a wire whisk. You do this to make sure you do not scramble and curd the egg yolks. If the temperature is too high or the mixture is not mixed together quickly enough, the mixture will curd. In that case, discard and start over.
- Return the egg and milk mixture to the pan, and return to the heat. Using a rubber spatula, stir constantly in a figure 8 fashion over the bottom and the edges of the pan, making sure you scrape the bottom well. Do not pause, but continue.
- Bring the mixture to a simmer, until the mixture reaches a temperature of between 170-175oF, or 76-80oC. This will take around 2 or 3 minutes. When the mixture reaches that temperature, remove from the heat. Do not heat above 180oF/82oC, or the mixture will curdle. The sauce will not thicken a lot, beyond the line-on-the-spoon stage, so don’t be alarmed when it is still a bit runny.
Finishing the sauce
- Add the vanilla extract and stir. You can let the sauce cool to room temperature by leaving uncovered and periodically stirring, or by pouring in a pot or jar, and placing cling wrap directly on the sauce. That will prevent a skin to form.
- You can use the sauce immediately, or store in the refrigerator. It will hold for 2-3 days, discard after that.