These Butterscotch Pot de Cremes are dessert magic! Need to put these on the’ potluck party plate must’ when we can all get together again.

Happy and healthy Sunday to you all! During these uncertain times, I hope you are finding a way to keep healthy, positive, and creative. Whether you are finding your true passion in homeschooling ;) or you are getting to those much needed around the house chores like reorganizing your closets or discovering your hidden kitchen chef talent by using all the ingredients in your cupboard for meal prep or you are just using this time to ssllloooowww down with your family, may you all be healthy and well.

I made these Butterscotch Pot de Crème yesterday for my family because I had all the ingredients and I just really needed a dessert fix after bleaching down our kitchen and reorganizing our home and the recipe picture was gorgeous. I set out all my ingredients before I got started and headed into our galley kitchen alone to get creating. Some people meditate, I bake. This could be seen as a problem. ;)

After reading Naomi from the Baker Royale’s recipe several times, and I noted to myself that the blogger attempted this not once but 5 times overall to get it right was a bit concerning, I thought I set out for success by having all my ingredients and pots, spatulas, and baking pan with ceramic cups ready to go would prove that I was going to win this the first time around. (Note: I am never this optimistic…who am I in this socially distancing quarantine?!) So after simmering the milk, heavy cream, and dark brown sugar and taking it off the heat, I began to work on bringing the sugar and water to a deep dark copper color. In the original recipe, Naomi writes 3-5 minutes, the darkening of the sugar took me about 12 minutes. I am a scaredy-cat when it comes to caramelizing sugar, that hot bubbling sugar is just asking for me to go to the ER when you really can’t go, so I was extra careful. So in the meantime, my milk mixture cooled down (obviously) and when my milk/sugar/cream mixture was poured into the now copper-colored sugar, it SEIZED up into a hard ball inside my wire whisk!!!! Ugh. This is not looking like the pictures from the blog. Yes, there were some colorful words uttered under my breath as my son, Matthew was eating lunch at the table and carefully asked if I needed assistance. ;) He was probably thinking his mom had just become unhinged. I needed to recover from this and show my kids that I can persevere, right?! And there is no throwing or wasting anything…that was 5 eggs people, heavy cream, and milk…I was not letting any of that go to waste without trying a little harder. So, I placed the mess, ahem, pot back on a low simmer to see if I could make it work. With some patience, the coppery colored sugar mass loosened from the whisk and melted back into the cream as did the loosening of the muscles in my shoulders.

Okay, so I hope I did not talk you out of it, because it was so worth it. After placing the mixture into the ceramic pots in the waiting simmering roasting pan, I popped it into the preheated oven for 45 minutes. Once, I took that pan out, I did not wait to taste it….I took a spoonful of hot butterscotch and sprinkled a few flakes of our sea salt and let it cool for a nano-second and took a spoonful and just sighed…..holy cannoli, it’s AH-mazing! The butterscotch flavor is punctuated by the flakes of sea salt for that heavenly sweet and salty balance. Can I hide these pots of goodness all for myself??!

I took espresso powder and mixed it into a little vessel with our sea salt to place on top of the butterscotch crème It was a nice heightened touch, but if you don’t have espresso powder at home, the recipe does not need it. All the ingredients are pretty much what you can order from your Munroe Dairy Delivery or in your fridge now.

You can follow Naomi from the Bakers Royale recipe for Butterscotch Pot de Crème here.

Recipe Note: I added the vanilla extract to the bowl of cracked and separated egg yolks. Also, bring your milk mixture back to a simmer before whisking it into the coppery sugar. Also, I used the egg whites in an omelet the next day or you can make Meringues!

Stay healthy, well and salty!