The Easiest Homemade Crème Brûlée Starts With This Inexpensive Boxed Dessert Mix

Crème brûlée is absolutely one of those desserts that seems incredibly fancy because it's associated with France and features that classic bubbly melted sugar crust. However, the big secret about crème brûlée (French for "burnt cream") is that it's nothing more than a classic custard topped with crackly melted sugar. In fact, classic foolproof crème brûlée recipes don't even require a torch to melt the sugar — you can just stick the whole ramekin under your oven's broiler for a few minutes.

However, if the thought of tempering egg yolks and straining hot custard leaves you in a cold sweat, there's a much easier and absolutely delicious way to make this fancy-sounding dessert. The secret, as it turns out, is instant pudding, which can be used in lots of clever ways to create tasty treats in a flash. In terms of crème brûlée, the instant pudding allows you to skip making traditional custard altogether. Simply prepare your favorite flavor of instant pudding mix according to package instructions, adding an additional cup of cream.

Since things like half-and-half and heavy whipping cream are so heavy and rich, they blend seamlessly into the pudding mix to create a texture much closer to dense, thick custard than pudding — especially after it's been chilled. After that, it's just a matter of achieving that sweet crackable crust by sprinkling ordinary sugar evenly over the top and melting it using the technique of your choice.

The biggest potential pitfalls in making this dessert include the possibility of lumps and using a touch of culinary cleverness to eradicate that manufactured aftertaste present in so many boxed pudding mixes. To avoid lumps, be sure to choose the right whisk for your needs — such as a French whisk, which looks like a traditional balloon whisk with looped wires forming a cage, but is stiffer. This means it'll cut through the thick custardy pudding mix more easily, which will help to prevent powdery clumps of mix from forming in your finished dessert.

The second issue is eliminating the odd, papery boxed flavor present in most store bought desserts. Adding cream and melted sugar will do some of this work for you, but to eradicate it completely you can infuse your cream with vanilla beans and other whole spices by simmering them together for a few minutes. This brings a freshness to the instant pudding mix that will totally mask that mass-produced flavor. Just be sure to chill your cream before using it to avoid ruining your custard's texture.

One of the most exciting parts of using this hack — other than its simplicity — is how many flavors you have to choose from. Plenty of brands make vanilla and chocolate, but you can skip right over that in favor of white chocolate, butterscotch, or even pistachio. Any one of these with a brown sugar crust would be heavenly.