LITTLE ROCK — How to Make an Impressive Dessert in 32 Easy Steps:
1. Consider settling for your old standby - the pan of wholesale club brownies that, when cut and sprinkled with powdered sugar, look homemade.
2. Then elect to really make something for real this time - a dessert that is tried-and-true.
3. Realize that the only sweets you’ve truly mastered are the pull apart-and-bake (because even the slice-and-bake requires not only using a knife but washing it) cookies.
4. Start surfing the Internet for ideas.
5. Yawn at the cheesecake, pie and cupcake recipes. They just seem so ordinary. You want to make something with spark! Something with flash!
6. Creme brulee! You’ll make creme brulee!
7. How the heck does one make creme brulee?
8. Heck, what is creme brulee anyway?
9. Consult an authority - and who knows fattening fare better than the Queen of Clogged Arteries herself, Paula Deen? - and get a list of ingredients and instructions for a chocolate variety (foodnetwork.com/recipes/ paula-deen/chocolate-cremebrulee-recipe/index.html) that requires cream, sugar, vanilla, chocolate liqueur, egg yolks, chocolate, cocoa powder ...
10. ... and a kitchen torch - yet another cooking apparatus that you will buy only to further clutter a cabinet.
11. Find a coupon to justify the impulse purchase at the huge homestuffs store. You’re not wasting money, you’re saving it!
12. Rationalize that you’re saving even more money using the coupon on replacement ramekins too (you used to have several but either they’ve been busted or misplaced).
13. Head to the grocery store to buy ingredients before going home and getting ready to cook.
14. Read directions on kitchen torch: “Easily refillable with butane fuel.” Yea!
15. Read further: “Fuel not included.” Boo!
16. Head to big discount department store and begin asking around for butane. “Here it is!” exclaims the guy in the camping section. No wait, that’s propane. Go to the garden section (?) like he recommends.
17. Follow another employee who confidently claims he knows exactly where it is. Think to self as you walk all through the store for what feels like miles: “I said butane! Not Bahrain!”
18. Thank him repeatedly and promise to name firstborn after him when he finds fuel in a random aisle you would not have discovered. Stockpile a supply so as not to repeat this exercise anytime soon, even though you’ll never use the highly flammable stuff again.
19. Head home and heat oven.
20. Warm cream, vanilla, liqueur and sugar on stove. Melt in chocolate and cocoa. Stir all that into 11 (!) egg yolks.
21. Spend the next 2.5 hours - the time it takes to bake dessert in ramekins (30 minutes) that are placed in a pan with water halfway up and then chill them (two hours) - trying not to think about all the calories and cholesterol.
22. But still find yourself obsessing. If the personal burns or house fire caused by torch malfunction don’t kill you, the dish surely will.
23. Read torch instructions. If time permits, find a flame retardant suit and gloves, a helmet, goggles, a truck, a hose, suspenders and a Dalmatian.
24. If time doesn’t permit, just pray.
25. Think that the dessert really needs a decorative - you mean healthy - touch and make another grocery store trip for will-look-pretty on-Facebook-when-you-post pictures - you m ean antioxidant-rich strawberries.
26. Because the dessert is not already fattening enough, sprinkle some more sugar on top of it.
27. Following the directions and using extreme caution, fuel up torch and wave flame over the dish, melting the sugar until caramelized. Or until everyone in your dinner company has oohed and aahed an adequate amount.
28. Be modest about your proud pyrotechnic pastry prowess, proclaiming, “Oh, it was nothing!”
29. Break into your crisp sugar shell to reach the maximally rich custard, enjoying every blissful bite without considering fat content.
30. What, like 50 grams of the saturated variety? Sixty grams?
31. Bask in the glory of being Martha Stewart meets KISS while vowing to prepare diet-friendlier selections in the days to come.
32. You did remember to save those 11 egg whites, right?
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Style, Pages 21 on 02/22/2011