Creme brûlée is, in my opinion one of my absolute best desserts around. Actually dishes. Across all categories. A bold statement I know, but I really stand by it. I don’t think I have come across a single person that doesn’t like it? Texturally it is a dream, the cool silky smooth cream contrasting incredibly well with the crisp snap of the caramel. When it comes to flavour the heavenly vanilla cream creates the perfect canvas for the devilishly deep bitter-sweetness of the burned caramel. For me this dessert is all about the juxtaposing textures and flavours; cooling cream against sweet smoky shards. It really is a match made in purgatory.

But. There is a but. Creme brûlée requires fresh cream, which requires me to know I want to make it in advance. Which in turn, would require me to change into a completely different person. One of the things I love most about cooking (granted there are a lot of them) is that you can whip up ‘just the thing’ as the need arises. I love few things more in life than rifling through a pantry, freezer and vegetable drawer to create something that will tick all the boxes of the occasion. I keep a pretty well stocked kitchen for this reason, and, as I try to avoid waste, my stash is pretty heavy on the non-perishables. I rarely buy cream as I rarely use it, and 9 times out of 10 it would go bad before I had decided what to do with it.

And yet, just the other day, completely out of nowhere, an urgent need arose for creme brûlée.

The weather had turned from dreamy sunny skies to thunderous storms in the space of a few hours. Taking refuge indoors, I poked around the kitchen cupboards absentmindedly (as I habitually do) and pulled out the following: Canned coconut milk, coffee extract and my recently favoured black sesame . At the start my mind went to warming coconut latte, but within minutes I was thinking much bigger and much badder. A caramel coconut sesame coffee storm in a ramekin.

This coconut milk based coffee and black sesame creme brûlée obviates the need to have fresh cream on hand and I imagine is also quite handy if you don’t eat dairy, or if you are partial to a parev pud. Despite its humble store cupboard beginnings this convenient confection more than stands up to its fresh cream counterparts.

The slightly bitter coffee and sesame balances the sweetness of the vanilla and coconut beautifully. Although coconut milk can be tricky to work with in a baked custard context due to its high water content, after a little trial and error I found the best results came from…drumroll please…not baking it! Rogue I know as a traditional creme brûlée is baked at a low temperature in a water bath, but a) it’s a faff b) coconut milk benefits from losing some of its water content along the way. This recipe thickens and cooks the custard on the hob in a pan. My version of the classic is already so cheeky on the ingredients and flavour front (nobody puts vanilla in a corner! Except me in this recipe when I invite heavyweights coffee and black sesame into the ring…woops). At this point I felt I may as well go full anarchist with the technique too. (Forgive me, Le Cordon Bleu. I am sure this rebellious cooking is just a phase…)

So to sum up, this brûlée is creme de la creme because it is is:

• store cupboard chic

• dairy free

• daring and dangerous

• and bloody delicious

let’s make it!