Crema Catalana.
Catalan Lemon and Cinnamon Custard
Crema catalana · say it: KREH-mah kah-tah-LAH-nah
Crema catalana is a chilled custard with a shattering sugar crust, and it is made in a saucepan rather than an oven. Whole milk is steeped with wide strips of lemon peel and a cinnamon stick, thickened with egg yolks and cornflour on direct heat, then poured into shallow earthenware dishes and refrigerated until firm. Just before serving, sugar is scattered over the top and burned dark in seconds, so the crust is hot and brittle while the custard beneath is still cold. The flavour is bright and spiced rather than rich — citrus peel and cinnamon carry it, not vanilla or cream — and the texture is deliberately lighter than a baked custard, closer to a set pastry cream.
- Gate
- SpainCatalonia
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 20 min
- Total time
- 4 hr 35 min incl. 4 hr rest
- Serves
- 6
- Status
- Medium
- Nutrition / serving · estimated
- Calories 345 kcal
- Protein 9 g
- Carbs 50 g
- Fat 12 g
- Fiber 0 g
- Sugar 44 g
Why this recipe works.
- Sets with starch on the stovetop, the actual Catalan method, so there is no water bath, no oven and no risk of a curdled bake.
- Infuses the milk properly with peel and cinnamon before the yolks go anywhere near it, which is where all the flavour comes from.
- Spells out the difference from crème brûlée rather than treating the two as interchangeable.
- Ready to eat the same afternoon, and it holds in the fridge for two days before the sugar goes on.
Ingredients.
9 itemsFor the custard
To finish
Equipment
- Heavy saucepan
- Balloon whisk
- Fine sieve
- Four to six shallow earthenware dishes or wide ramekins
- Blowtorch or a crema catalana iron
Instructions.
Infuse the milk
Put 800 ml of the milk in a heavy pan with the lemon peel, the cinnamon stick and the orange peel if using. Bring slowly to just below a boil, then take off the heat, cover, and leave to steep for 20 minutes — the milk should smell strongly of citrus and spice, not faintly.
Tip Longer steeping is better, up to an hour. Just take the peel out before it starts to soften and shed pith.
Mix the yolks and starch
Whisk the egg yolks with the caster sugar and salt until pale and thick. In a separate cup, whisk the cornflour into the remaining 200 ml of cold milk until completely smooth, then beat that into the yolks.
Tip Any lumps of starch here will still be lumps at the end. Take the extra thirty seconds.
Temper and combine
Strain the infused milk to remove the peel and cinnamon, reheat it until steaming, then pour it into the yolk mixture in a slow, thin stream while whisking without pause. Return the whole lot to the pan.
Tip Milk into eggs, never eggs into hot milk. This is the step where custards get scrambled.
Cook to a bare boil
Cook over medium heat, whisking constantly and reaching into the corners of the pan, for 6–8 minutes. The mixture will thicken suddenly, then release one or two lazy bubbles at the surface — hold it there for 30 seconds to cook out the starch, then pull it off the heat.
Tip Unlike a plain egg custard, this one must boil briefly. Stopping early leaves a raw, chalky starch taste.
Strain and chill
Pass the custard through a fine sieve into shallow earthenware dishes, filling them about 2.5 cm deep, and tap each one on the counter to settle the surface flat. Cool to room temperature, cover with cling film touching the custard, and refrigerate at least 4 hours until fully set and cold to the touch.
Burn the sugar at the last minute
Scatter a tablespoon of granulated sugar in an even layer over each chilled dish, tilting to spread it thin. Torch in tight circles until the sugar melts, bubbles and turns deep amber with a few darker patches, then serve within five minutes while the crust still cracks under a spoon.
Tip A thin, even layer caramelises in seconds. A thick one melts unevenly and sets into a chewy sheet.
Tips from our kitchen.
- Pare the lemon peel in wide strips with a vegetable peeler and leave the white pith behind — pith turns the custard bitter over a long infusion.
- Temper the hot milk into the yolks, not the other way round, and pour it in a thin stream while whisking. Reversing this scrambles the eggs in seconds.
- The custard must reach a bare boil to cook out the starch. Unlike a plain egg custard it will not split, and if you stop early it tastes chalky.
- Use wide, shallow dishes about 3 cm deep. Deep ramekins chill slowly and the custard under the crust ends up warm.
- Sugar the tops only when you are ready to serve. Sugar sprinkled in advance dissolves into the surface and will never caramelise properly.
- Chill the sugared dishes for five minutes before torching if your kitchen is warm — a cold surface keeps the crust brittle instead of syrupy.
Substitutions.
- Cornflour → Rice flour, or half cornflour and half potato starch
- Rice starch is the older Catalan thickener and gives a slightly softer set with a cleaner flavour. Use the same weight.
- Lemon peel → Half lemon, half orange peel
- Extremely common in Catalonia and arguably the better version — orange rounds off the sharpness without dulling the citrus.
- Granulated sugar for the crust → Caster sugar
- Melts faster and more evenly under a torch, which helps if your flame is weak. Granulated gives a slightly thicker, more shattering crust.
Variations.
- Crema de Sant Josep
- The same dessert under its feast-day name, eaten across Catalonia on 19 March. Some bakeries make it slightly richer for the occasion, with an extra yolk or two.
- Crema catalana ice cream
- A Catalan restaurant standard: churn the chilled custard thinned with a little more milk, and serve with shards of caramelised sugar broken over the top.
- Anise-scented
- Add a star anise or a splash of anís to the infusing milk. A traditional variation in parts of Catalonia and noticeably more assertive than the plain cinnamon version.
Storage & reheating.
The unsugared custard keeps 3 days in the refrigerator with cling film pressed onto the surface to stop a skin forming. Do not caramelise it until minutes before serving: a burned sugar crust starts absorbing moisture from the custard immediately and turns tacky within about twenty minutes, and refrigerating a finished one dissolves it completely. It does not freeze — the starch weeps on thawing and the texture goes grainy. If it stiffens too much in the fridge, whisk it smooth before serving.
Serve with
Crisp almond biscuits — carquinyolis are the Catalan choice — and a small glass of sweet moscatell.
The story behind Crema Catalana.
It is worth stating plainly what crema catalana is not, because the comparison follows it everywhere: it is not crème brûlée. Crème brûlée is a cream-based custard baked slowly in a water bath, set only by egg, usually flavoured with vanilla, and served in a deep ramekin. Crema catalana is made with milk, contains no cream at all, is thickened with cornflour or rice starch as well as yolk, is cooked on the stovetop in a matter of minutes, and is flavoured with lemon or orange peel and cinnamon. It is also served in a wide, shallow earthenware dish, which is not a stylistic choice — the shallow depth is what lets a thin custard chill fast and take a crust without warming through.
Which came first is a live argument. Catalonia points to versions of a starch-set milk custard appearing in medieval Catalan cookery manuscripts, well before the first printed French crème brûlée recipe; French writers point out that similar burnt-sugar creams appear across Europe and that no single line of descent is provable. What is not disputed is that they became separate desserts with separate methods, and the Catalan one carries its own protected regional designation.
In Catalonia the dessert has a date. It is eaten on 19 March, the feast of Sant Josep and Spain's Father's Day, so widely that many Catalans still call it crema de Sant Josep. The traditional tool is not a blowtorch but a ferro — a heavy iron disc on a handle, heated over a flame until it glows and then pressed straight onto the sugar. It caramelises in a second or two with almost no heat transferred downward, which is precisely the point: the custard must stay cold. A blowtorch does the same job well; a domestic grill does it badly, because by the time the sugar melts the top centimetre of custard has gone lukewarm.
Questions, answered.
What is the difference between crema catalana and crème brûlée?
They differ in almost every technical respect. Crema catalana uses whole milk, is thickened with cornflour or rice starch alongside the yolks, is cooked on the stovetop in about ten minutes, and is flavoured with citrus peel and cinnamon. Crème brûlée uses cream, is set by egg alone, is baked slowly in a water bath, and is usually flavoured with vanilla. Crema catalana is also served in a wide shallow dish rather than a deep ramekin, and is lighter on the palate.
Can I make it without a blowtorch?
Yes, though the results differ. The traditional tool is a ferro, an iron disc heated until red hot and pressed onto the sugar, which caramelises instantly without warming the custard. A blowtorch does the same job well. A domestic grill is the weakest option, because the sugar takes long enough to melt that the custard beneath goes lukewarm — if you use one, set the dishes on a tray of ice and run the grill as hot as it goes.
Why is my custard lumpy?
Either the hot milk went into the yolks too fast, cooking them into threads, or the cornflour was not fully dispersed before heating. Whisk the starch into a little cold milk until completely smooth first, pour the hot milk into the yolk mixture in a thin stream while whisking constantly, and pass the finished custard through a fine sieve before it goes into the dishes. A sieve rescues almost any batch.
Does crema catalana contain cream?
No, despite the name — crema here means custard, not cream. It is made with whole milk only, which is a large part of why it tastes lighter and more clearly of lemon and cinnamon than crème brûlée does. Adding cream makes a perfectly nice dessert but moves it away from what Catalans would recognise.
How far ahead can I make it?
Make the custard up to three days ahead and keep it refrigerated in its dishes with cling film touching the surface. It needs at least four hours to set properly, so same-day is fine as long as you start in the morning. Only the sugar crust is last-minute, and that takes under a minute per dish.
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Recipe by The DishRoute Kitchen · published August 19, 2026 · updated August 19, 2026