all over you…
I melted the butter in a saucepan then added the flour. Once the doughy taste was cooked off, I added the cream, stirring until it was blended. Then I grated in fresh nutmeg and added rum, sugar, and a pinch of salt, stirring until it boiled, smoothed, and then thickened.
Simultaneously, I started on the crème brûlée custard, combining cream, vanilla bean, and a pinch of salt. Then I grated nutmeg into the saucepan. I had had the crazy idea that I would make a small, thin crème brûlée, place it carefully on top of the soufflé, and then quickly caramelize a sugar crust on top. This would create the crackle of the burnt sugar, the custardiness of the crème brûlée filling, and the bite and airiness of the soufflé.
To keep my egg yolks from curdling when I added them to the warm cream, I blended them with a bit of the spiced liquid in another bowl and added that back to the double boiler, stirred until the mixture thickened, then set it aside to cool.
While it did so, I whipped the egg whites with cream of tartar. I had carefully selected fresh, free-range eggs. Fresh eggs were harder to whip, but the bubbles formed more closely together, creating a more structurally sound soufflé. Once I had stiff peaks—
Stiff, hee-hee!
—I carefully folded the egg whites into the soufflé mixture. I couldn’t stir it, as that would deflate all the bubbles.
Once the crème brûlée was half-submerged in a water bath and cooking away merrily in the oven, I tried to figure out what cocktail to serve. It should be fruity, so I headed to the pantry for some oranges and grapefruit. Citrus was technically a winter fruit. People used to give each other expensive boxes of oranges, tangerines, and grapefruits for the holidays. I was trying to decide whether I wanted to make a tangerine-based cocktail or a grapefruit-based one when I heard commotion out in the studio.
I poked my head out of the pantry then cursed. Keeley was at my station, and she had the oven open!
“Don’t you dare!” I yelled, racing toward her.
She screamed and slammed the oven door shut.
“You’re trying to sabotage my dessert,” I shouted, jabbing my finger at her.
“I was trying to save it. Look, your soufflé is all flat,” she protested.
I wrenched open the door. The soufflé had deflated and imploded. It was a pancake now.
“You did that!” I yelled at her. “You ruined it when you slammed the oven door.”
“Did not,” Keeley insisted. “You just can’t cook. That was your fault.”
I checked at the clock. Crap! I did not have enough time to make another soufflé. I could serve crème brûlée and what, cocktails and fruit? That didn’t seem impressive enough, especially since Keeley was making an intricate tart.
I ran back to the pantry and looked around in desperation. The reality was that I was not a chef. I baked as a hobby. Maybe a trained pastry chef could create something miraculous; however, I was only an artist.
An idea bloomed in my mind.
I checked my crème brûlées. At least they hadn’t been ruined. Originally, I had been planning on simply pouring the sugar on and torching it, but what if I went above and beyond? In the past, I had done wood burning for various art projects, and I also knew how to weld. Surely making art with a crème brûlée torch couldn’t be that difficult.
Using one of the Platinum Provisions high-end butane torches provided at our stations, I did a few test runs on sugar on a plate. It ran a bit, so I wasn’t going to be able to do anything intricate. But I could create snowflakes, a tree, and reindeer.
I pulled the crème brûlées out of the oven and let them sit and rest. Then I made the bourbon-and-tangerine cocktail with orange bitters, simple syrup, a bit of fresh lemon juice, and a generous amount of fresh tangerine juice and garnished it with a tangerine peel.
Only ten minutes left. I poured the sugar onto the crème brûlée and went to work, first carefully melting the sugar and letting it set then turning the flame up to create the burnt umber char marks for the holiday designs.
“Spatulas down! Time to take your holiday-card pictures!” Anastasia called just as I finished the last sparkle of the snowflake. “Remember, your dessert should be as photogenic as you and Jonathan would be as Mr. and Mrs. Frost.”
Lilith and Emma took each girl’s picture with