This is a choose-your-own-ending dessert. Made with the same base using the same cooking method, crème brûlée and crème caramel are like funhouse-mirror images of one another. Both are rich, delicate, vanilla-scented custards, but the former is topped with a hard, crackly caramel lid, while the latter is coated in a liquid caramel sauce that forms during baking (the caramel actually starts on the bottom, but becomes the top when inverted, like a flan). Would you rather cook the sugar on the stove to a deep amber color at the beginning and pour into ramekins for crème caramel, or use a torch to caramelize it at the very end for crème brûlée? The answer comes down to preference and comfort (and, possibly, your desire to own a torch).
WHEN YOU BAKE APPLES with caramel sauce, you get a juicy mixture—juicier than a traditional apple pie filling, because there are no thickeners. You also get one that’s less sweet— “burning” the sugar to caramelize it gives it pleasantly bitter undertones. These are the characteristics that make this filling a good match for a topping that’s sweet, earthy and crunchy. It’s a topping that began life as streusel and ended by welcoming whole wheat flour (the earthy element) and oatmeal. You can swap the apples for pears or make this with quinces or, better yet, a combination of quinces, apples and/or pears. While you’re fiddling, think about adding toasted nuts (walnuts or pecans) to the mix.
Anzac Cookies? Love them! Millionaire’s Shortbread? Grew up eating them. But what happens when you mash the two together? Utterly wonderful, joyous things, that’s what. When making the caramel, ignore your phone for a minute; Instagram® can wait, the caramel needs your total and undivided attention. Anzac cookies, if you haven’t come across them, are Antipodean favourites originally made to raise money to support the war effort in the First World War.
Forget everything you have ever learned about flash cooking fish. In this southern Vietnamese “kho,” or traditional, homey braising recipe from Vietnamese scholar and author, Andrea Nguyen, catfish steaks are bubbled for an hour in a caramel sauce, resulting in deliciously dense pieces of fish cloaked in a sticky mahogany sauce.