Baking with Dorie: Daniel Boulud's Coffee-Cardamom Pots de Creme

Leave it to Daniel Boulud, one of the country's most exciting chefs, to come up with a fresh take on classic pots de creme - baked custard to many of us. 

Here, in a recipe from the Cafe Boulud Cookbook, Daniel caramelizes coffee beans and cardamom pods to intensify their flavor, then he uses them to infuse the custard's milk.    The inspiration was Middle Eastern coffee; the result is an exotic reading of what is essentially a comfort-food favorite.

The recipe is this week's Baking with Dorie column at Serious Eats.  (And the photograph, taken from the book, is the work of Gentl & Hyers, the same photographers who did the pictures for Baking with Julia.)

A note to those of you who jump to the recipe and don't read the intro (I know you're out there): if you don't want to cover the pan with plastic wrap, that's okay - you can use aluminum foil.

Comments

[katy]

i'm going to have to take some cardamom pods to work with me to try out this coffee/cardamom combo! yum.

[Kieran]

That looks like a recipe with which I could fall in love! Am a big fan of your Paris Sweets and Herme cookbooks...

[michelle]

I used the method for caramelizing the sugar and coffee beans together to make the most fantastic coffee ice cream ever!!! Haven't tried it (the ice cream) with the cardamom, though I thought the pots de creme were great.

[Marni]

This sounds fabulous. Cardamom is one of my FAVORITE spices!

[Rona]

Perfect for a winter night! May I ask which cardamom pods you use? Green or black and is there a great difference between them?

[elarael]

I remember the first time I had this flavor combo. A friend's husband was Turkish and he made us real Turkish coffee after dinner in tiny cups with cardamom seeds and it was Amazing. These must be incredible, what a fantastic idea.