Getting married and planning a honeymoon in the age of COVID has been a very exciting adventure that has now spanned years. Our original plan for an international trip ended up getting nixed because we felt like the situation was too fluid, and imagine flying to another and then having to spend the entire two weeks quarantining in a hotel room before flying home. We ended up going to Hawai’i, right before the Omicron spike, which was great timing and an awesome trip.

Besides the incredible waterfalls, volcanoes, snorkeling and beaches, Hawai’i is also a great food vacation destination. My historical understanding of Hawaiian food is that it’s a blend of traditional Polynesian canoe crops, seafood and pork (pigs were the largest domesticate in the Pacific islands) with traditional foods of American military occupation (essentially canned foods) like canned condensed milk, spam, etc. and the foods of immigrant laborers on pineapple and sugar cane plantations; Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Puerto Rican, Portuguese and Filipino. One of the ingredients we got to enjoy was ube, a purple sweet potato that has a mild earthy vanilla flavor and is common in the Philippines where it originates. When I was shopping at HMart I saw a can of Ube Condensed Milk and immediately grabbed it with no plan, but following some research decided to go with a creme brûlée. Look for ube condensed milk in your local Asian Supermarket or you can order it online. This recipe is loosely based on the NYTimes vanilla creme brûlée recipe.

Do NOT wear white when you make this. The purple is INTENSE and gets everywhere.

Makes 8 creme brûlées

Ingredients

1 13.4 oz can Ube Sweetened Condensed Creamer

2 2/3 cups heavy or light cream or half and half

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 loose tablespoons dried hibiscus

10 egg yolks

3/4 cup sugar, plus more for topping

• Heat oven to 325 degrees. In a saucepan, combine creamer, cream, salt and hibiscus and cook over low heat until hot (just until you start to see small bubbles on the sides). Let it sit and cool a little while you prepare the egg yolks. This is a good time to put a kettle of water on to boil for your water bath.
• In a bowl, beat yolks and sugar together until light. Stir about a quarter of the cream mixture into the eggs, then pour that back into the remaining cream mixture and stir (tempering the eggs to avoid scrambled eggs). Strain into a good pouring vessel to get rid of the hibiscus pieces and any scrambled egg bits you might have ended up with.
• Pour into 8 6-oz ramekins and place the ramekins in a baking dish. I would recommend putting the baking dish in the oven and then pouring the boiled water into the dish so you aren’t carrying sloshing boiling water across the kitchen. Fill the baking dish halfway up the sides of the ramekins with boiling water. Bake for 35-45 minutes until centers are barely set (you want a jiggle when you shake it but not a liquid spot in the middle).
• Cool completely. Refrigerate for at least two hours and up to a couple of days. When it’s time to serve you can either use the blowtorch method or the broiler. Sprinkle a teaspoon of sugar evenly over the top. With the blowtorch don’t be afraid to get close to the sugar, you’re going for mostly dark brown with some black parts even. For the broiler method place ramekins in a broiler 2 to 3 inches from the heat source. Turn on broiler. Cook until sugar melts and browns with a bit of blackening, about 5 minutes. Watch it like a hawk. Both methods will generate some smoke so don’t do this right under a sensitive smoke alarm.