Keto Crème Brûlée

This single-serve Keto Crème Brûlée is a fancy French-style keto dessert for your holiday table. You’ll love the soft, rich, creamy, and silky vanilla custard topped with a crunchy sugar-free candied caramel.

Bonus, these are gluten-free crème brûlée, and with only 4 grams of net carbs per serving, you can safely indulge in one of these desserts.

Nothing new, I am French, and I love sugar-free desserts, so today I had to share one of the most popular French dessert recipes I used to love back in France: the famous crème brûlée.

This low-carb crème brûlée is perfect as a healthier dessert for any occasion because it’s naturally:

• Sugar-free
• Gluten-free
• A Dairy-free option is provided, just in case you want to make a sugar-free paleo crème brûlée.

How To Make Keto Crème Brûlée

It sounds a bit overwhelming to make crème brûlée for the first time, but it’s actually a pretty easy dessert to make if you are being patient and careful with every step below.

Ingredients

First, prepare the ingredients needed for the recipe. All you need are 5 simple ingredients:

• Heavy Cream – heavy cream is a keto-friendly dairy product.
• Unsweetened Almond Milk – you can also use more heavy cream instead of almond milk, but I like the balance of both. It makes the crème brûléeless rich.
• Vanilla Bean Pod – that’s the secret of a delicious crème brûlée. Avoid vanilla extract that won’t add the same vanilla flavor to your dessert.
• Erythritol or any keto granulated sweetened you love like Monk fruit erythritol blend. You can’t use pure Monk fruit in this recipe, especially for the topping, because it won’t melt and won’t form the particular caramelized topping we love in a crème brûlée.
• Egg Yolks – you won’t use the egg whites in this recipe, but I recommend you keep them in an airtight container in the fridge to make my French coconut macaron or French floating island.

Making the Vanilla Cream

First, add the heavy cream and almond milk to a non-stick saucepan. Use a shape knife to open the vanilla bean pod lengthwise and use the tip of the knife to scrape down the vanilla seeds into the saucepan.

Place the vanilla pod into the saucepan as well and set it aside while you prepare the egg yolk.

Beating The Egg Yolk

Now, crack eggs and split egg yolks to egg white. Place the egg white in an airtight container and store it in the fridge for up to 24 hours for another recipe like my keto coconut macrons.

Place the egg yolks into a large mixing bowl with the granulated keto low carb sweetener you choose.

Using an electric beater, beat the mixture at high speed for about 1 minute until the mixture is fluffy, pale in color, and almost double in volume.

Set it aside.

Warming The Cream

Now, bring the saucepan with the vanilla cream over the stove on medium-high heat. Bring to a low-boil, which means as soon as you can see small bubbles forming on the side of the saucepan, stop heat and remove the saucepan from heat.

Use a small sieve of two forks to remove the vanilla pod from the saucepan and discard it.

Whisking Hot Liquid Into Egg Yolk

Now, use a hand wire wish and whisk the egg yolk mixture gently as you slowly pour the hot milk onto it.

Keep pouring slowly and whisking to combine and form a light custard. It will create lots of foam on top, and that’s ok.

Removing The Foam

When you have added all the hot milk onto the egg yolk, you can see a thick bubbly foam has formed on top of the bowl.

Using a spoon or small sieve, as seen in my picture below, scoop out as much foam as you can to only keep the yellow custard. You should scoop out about 1/3 cup of foam, discard it.

Preparing The Baking Pan

First, preheat the oven to 350°F (180°C).

Prepare an 8-inch square pan by filling it with tap hot water, about 1 inch in height.

Then, place the four empty ramekins (mine are 7.5 cm high) into the pan.

Filling The Ramekins

Use a measuring cup to fill each ramekin up to the top.

Now, place the baking dish with the four ramekins into the oven in the center rack and bake for 30-35 minutes.

The crème brûlée is ready to take out from the oven when it’s slightly set, but the center is still jiggly.

Cooling Down

Remove the low-carb crème brûlée from the oven. Use an oven mitten to remove the ramekin from the hot water bath and place it onto a wooden board to cool down at room temperature for about 10 minutes.

Then, film the top of each ramekin with plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight to set this easy keto dessert.

Broiling The Top

The next day, just before serving the dessert to your guests, prepare the caramelized toppings. Below I am providing two options.

First, remove the plastic wrap on top of each ramekin and spray some water on the crème using a spray bottle or rub with a pastry brush.

Now, sprinkle one tablespoon of golden erythritol on top of each ramekin.

Option 1: Using A Kitchen Torch

That’s the best option to broil the top of the crème brûlée fast. This also prevents warming the whole crème, and you can serve your dessert at its best temperature.

Start the kitchen torch, bring on top of the crème brûlée, keeping it about 2-3 inches away from the top, and work in a circular motion to broil the top of the cream.

Option 2: Broiling In An Oven

Set the oven on broil mode and bring your oven rack to the top rack of the oven.

Place the crème brûlée ramekins on the top rack and broil for 2-4 minutes, watching the crème brûlée closely as it can broil super fast.

When the top forms bubbles, and the sugar-free sweetener melt, you can remove the ramekins from the oven.

Setting The Caramel Topping

Sugar-free sweeteners don’t harden as well as regular sugar. So to make the top of this keto crème brûlée hard, pop the ramekins in the fridge again until the topping is hard and set.

Swaps

You can make a dairy-free crème brûlée by swapping the heavy cream for canned coconut cream.

Make sure you use only the top thick part of the can that contains all the fat for the best result. Another option is to use soy cream.

Texture of Crème Brûlée

If you have never had a crème brûlée before in your life, you probably wonder how it tastes and what should be the right texture after baking.

A crème brûlée is soft, creamy like thick yogurt or vanilla custard. It shouldn’t be set and firm as a French flan. If so, it means the crème has been overbaked.

Also, the particularity of this French dessert is the topping. A crème brûlée should be covered with a thin layer of hard caramel that breaks nicely into pieces when you tap it firmly with a spoon.

Serving

The big question I always get is about the ideal serving temperature for crème brûlée. Should I serve it cold or lukewarm? Actually, this depends on your taste buds. There’s no rule, but in traditional French restaurants, it’s always served lukewarm.

The top of the crème brûlée is always broiled just before serving on top of a refrigerated ramekin.

So the crème brûlée is served very cold, but the topping and top few millimeters are lukewarm and less set.

Have you made this sugar-free crème brûlée recipe? Share a review or comment below to connect with me,