Crème Anglaise Recipe

Ingredients

Ingredient Notes

• Milk/Cream – You can use half and half in place of the milk and cream.
• Vanilla Bean – Vanilla bean is the classic flavoring, but you can replace the bean with vanilla extract or a flavoring of your choice.

• Combine the milk and cream in a large saucepan.
• Scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and put them into the pot along with the pod.
• Heat the mixture until scalding.

• While the milk and cream are heating up, whisk the egg yolks with the sugar.

• Whisk the scalding cream into the bowl of egg yolks and sugar.
• Return the custard to the pan.

• Cook the custard over low heat, stirring constantly. Do not let the mixture come to a boil.
• Cook just until it is thick enough to coat the spatula (this is called “nappe”).

• Immediately strain the custard back into the bowl.
• Discard the vanilla pod or save it to make vanilla sugar.

• Chill the sauce completely before serving.
• Perfect creme anglaise will coat the back of the spoon and leave a trail when swiped with finger.

Storage

Creme Anglaise should be refrigerated until serving. It’s best within a day of being made, but will keep in the refrigerator for 3-4 days.

Pastry Chef Tips for making Custard

If you master the technique of making crème anglaise you can make any egg custard. Pastry cream, Ice cream and Lemon curd are all made with the same technique.

Heat up a liquid base (dairy for custards and fruit juice for curds) then “liason” the hot liquid with eggs and sugar and cook until it’s thickened. That’s it in a nutshell.

What is “liason”? Add some of the hot liquid to the eggs to bring the temperatures closer together. If you pour the raw eggs into the hot liquid you’ll end up with bits of scrambled egg in the custard. To get a silky smooth sauce “liason” the ingredients.

How to fix curdled Creme Anglaise

If the sauce is cooked too fast or too long it can become a bit curdled. If that happens, all may not be lost. If it’s not too far gone you can usually fix your creme anglaise using an immersion (or regular) blender. Give the sauce a whirl and it should regain it’s silky texture.

How to flavor and serve Creme Anglaise

• Add a shot of Grand Marnier and serve it with chocolate souffle.
• Add espresso powder for coffee flavored sauce, lemon zest or limoncello for lemon sauce, finely chopped mint leaves for mint sauce, etc, etc, etc.
• Crème Anglaise is wonderful with warm dessert souffle, Roasted Rhubarb Summer Pudding, drizzled over fresh fruit, Pound Cake, Fruit pie, Angel Food Cake, or Apple Tarte Tatin.