Pistachio Crème Brulee – Creamy, nutty, and flavorful pistachio custard is finished off with a toasted layer of caramelized sugar before serving.
I am constantly looking for new and inspiring ways to honor my love affair with pistachios. In years past, I’ve included pistachios in classic recipes such as macarons and biscotti but also in more fun ways such as pancakes and sugar-dusted snowball cookies. After those recipes, what was next?
During a casual browsing through recipes online, it hit me – crème brulee! I should make a Pistachio Crème Brulee! That nutty flavor of pistachio was perfect for the simple, yet rich flavors in a crème brulee.
My first thought was how do I incorporate that distinctive pistachio flavor and color into the crème brulee in the most natural way? I found a recipe that suggested infusing the cream with pistachio flavor before placing it into the custard dishes. I loved that idea! It was perfect for extracting everything we wanted from the pistachios, without the getting crunch. So how do we do that exactly? You’ll have to read below to find out!
Making the custard
There are two main steps to making the custard for the creme brulee:
- Warm the cream
- Bake in the oven
The reason we warm the cream before baking is to speed up the baking process. If we place the cold cream into the oven, it will take longer for the cream to eventually cook into a custard. As such, it gets warmed on the stove first, and then place into custard dishes and baked.
Pistachio infusion
While we warm the cream, we will also add the pistachios to help extract the pistachio flavor. To bring out all the flavor in the pistachios, we must chop them up in a food processor. Once chopped, they are added to the cream as it heats on the stove. Once the cream is warm, it’s covered and left to steep for 30 minutes.
Baking the custard
Once the cream is infused with the pistachio, it’s strained to remove the pistachio chunks and then added to the egg yolks. The mixture is then poured into custard dishes, which are sitting in a rectangular baking dish. We place them in the dish so we can add a hot water bath. The hot water bath serves two purposes:
- Prevent cracks from forming on the top of the custard
- Cooks the custard faster
The hot water bath is added to the baking dish and then carefully placed in a preheated oven to bake for 20 minutes or until the custard is mostly firm, with the center is slightly jiggly.
Brulee the sugar
Once the custard is done baking in the oven, it’s cooled in the fridge to help the custard firm up. Right before serving, granulated sugar is dusted on top and then torched with a blow torch.
Tips & Tricks
- Under ZERO circumstances can you brulee the sugar in advance. It MUST be done immediately before serving to ensure it doesn’t soften up. In addition, when burnt sugar gets cooled in the fridge, it turns to liquid, which ruins the custard.
- In order to get the texture in the crème brulee perfect, you must not heat the cream too much over the stove. If you do, it will thicken too much and cause the crème brulee to be super thick after it bakes in the oven.
- Don’t skip out on straining out the chopped pistachios after they steep in the warmed cream. It’s so important to keep the crème brulee creamy. Therefore, we must remove all the chunky pistachio pieces before baking the custard.
- You can use a broiler to torch the sugar on top but it’s not super reliable because you can’t control the direct heat. Therefore, you may need to move the custards around the oven to ensure an even crust.
Pistachio Crème Brulee
Ingredients
- 1 cup toasted pistachios salted or unsalted
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 1 vanilla bean
- ¼ cup honey
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 4 large egg yolks
- ⅛ teaspoon almond extract
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Place pistachios into food processor and pulse until ground up but not turned into a paste. Place into medium saucepan with cream, honey, salt, and vanilla bean. Whisk together. Place over medium heat until scalding but not boiling. Remove from heat and cover to steep for 30 minutes.
- Strain cream mixture to remove chopped pistachios and vanilla bean. Discard pistachios. Split vanilla bean pod and scrape out flecks and put into cream mixture. Discard pod.
- Place egg yolks in a medium bowl with almond extract and whisk until blended. Add 1/4 cup of cream mixture to the yolks to temper them. Whisk together and then add the rest of the cream mixture.
- Place four ramekins into 13×9 baking pan. Ladle the custard mixture into the ramekins very gently. Fill ramekins almost to the very top, leaving about 1/2 inch.
- Boil water and pour into baking dish, creating a bath for the ramekins. Fill about halfway up the ramekins. Bake in preheated oven for 25-28 minutes, until set but center still jiggles. Cook time depends on the height of your ramekins. Mine were wide and shorter so they took 25 minutes.
- Remove from oven and carefully remove ramekins from hot water bath. I used a fork and a pot holder to achieve this. Let cool to room temperature and then place in refrigerator to thicken and chill, at least 4 hours.
- Once cooled and right before serving, place about 1 – 1 1/2 teaspoons of sugar on top of each custard shake around to create an even layer of sugar. Torch with blow torch to caramelize the sugar. Serve immediately.
Notes
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More recipes you’ll love:
Blueberry Crème Brulee
Irish Cream Pots de Creme
Strawberry White Chocolate Eclairs
Wow, pistachios in a creme-brulée! this should is a masterpiece, the one you keep for special guests lol. It sounds easy to make, I hope I can make a delicious creme brulée without eggs!
Pistachios are one of my favorite nuts and this creme brulee recipe is inspired – I’m going to try it using a broiler, but I can just imagine how creamy and flavorful it is.
How creative. Pistachios in creme brulee. Can’t wait to give this a try. Thanks for sharing
Pistachio flavours in a creme brûlée is definitely a match made in heaven! Yum!
What a masterpiece! I have never seen pistachio with cream brûlée but I LOVE the combination! What a wonderful dessert recipe!
Love creme brulee, and I love the pistachio flavor in this even more!
Oh my, this recipe sounds delicious! I love pistachios so this is right up my alley.
So decadent! I have been looking for creme brulee recipes, and came across your brilliant recipe. I am definitely making this asap!
This recipe sounds so decadent and delicious! I can’t wait to try it!
Love the idea of a pistachio creme brulee! It looks so rich and creamy! Yum!
Oh, wow! This is true decadence! My husband loves pistachios and creme brulee, so I’m saving this recipe to make for him on Father’s Day!
Ooo! I looooove pistachios, so I’m sure this is amazing! Actually, all of your creme brulee flavors look amazing! I can’t wait to give this a go, since it’s so easy to make! Thanks for sharing!
Love the Pistachio flavor to this Creme Brulee. Deicious desserts are a feast for sure. This look creamy and healthier version too.
Super love this awesome and easy recipe! It’s so delicious and highly recommended! Will make it again! Thanks for sharing!
oh wow this looks so tasty!! i love pistachios they are the best!!!
Oh man you put one of my favorite flavors into one of my favorite desserts! Same goes for my husband so he is going to be so excited when I make this!
FIrst of all I love Creme Brulee of any kind, but then add in pistachio, OMG… I am in love with this recipe!
Omg I love this! Pistachio cream was my go to flavor of snow cones as a kid and it is still a favorite today!