Conifer Crème Brûlée

A coast-to-coast custard homage to evergreen trees featuring fermented spruce tip honey, pine nut brittle, pine pollen cream & a crackly pine sugar crust

The concept for a conifer-inspired dessert has been kicking around my brain since our trip from Florida to the West coast this past spring. It was our first time exploring the wilderness of the West, and we were astonished by the beauty of the behemoth trees at every turn. As we traveled north up the coast of California towards Oregon, the massive redwoods gave way to stunning blue-hued spruce. We ambled up the coastal highway, pulling over at every lookout point to take in the majestic views of the Pacific ocean, which were amplified by the enormous evergreens growing along the cliffs that line the shore. I’m used to the coastlines of eastern Florida, which have long been totally developed, though long-time residents of my hometown tell tales of growing up with gnarled sand oaks growing along the beach dunes. By comparison, the rugged coastline of the Pacific is far more visually interesting, at least to me.

I am an experienced forager in Florida, but it took me a few days to acclimate myself to the flora and fauna surrounding me out West. One of the most standout discoveries of the trip took place in northern California when I realized that fragrant wild fennel was growing everywhere; it is so prolific that it’s considered invasive! By the time we arrived in Oregon, I was armed with a book on wildflowers of the Pacific Northwest & had iNaturalist (a really handy wildlife identification app) at the ready. We eventually made it to our second stop along the Oregon coast, Cape Perpetua, and set up camp for the next few days. (This is a good place to mention that Cape Perpetua is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been and is worth the visit if you ever find yourself in Oregon.) The following day, we hiked from our campsite up the side of a rocky cliff through a forest of old-growth Sitka spruce trees. I noticed the fresh bright green growth at the end of the branches, and realized it was spruce tip season! Spruce tips have intrigued me since my days owning a brewery with my husband; a few breweries that were more financially prosperous than ours sometimes seasonally ordered fresh spruce tips from the West coast to use in beers. And now I was able to forage some for myself! My kitchen resources were limited since we were in a rented van, but I had procured a jar of California wildflower honey & thought a simple fermented spruce tip honey would be the perfect way to preserve the piney and herbaceous aroma.

Oregon spruce tips fermenting in California honey.

After about a week of fermentation, the spruce tip honey transformed into a lightly effervescent syrup, with notes of mild rosemary and nutty pine. I knew it would be an incredible and unique component in a dessert. I used it as an ingredient in a couple of campsite meals; one of my most memorable snacks from the trip was spruce tip honey drizzled on toast from one of the lovely sourdough bakeries we visited along the way, with crisp slices of Washington opal apple, an oozy wedge of Point Reyes Quinta cheese & bee pollen from The Pollen Man, who claims via the label that bee pollen has the “Highest Vibrational Nutrients and Healing Agents the Planetary Surface is Capable of Yielding. I personally can’t vouch for this bold health claim, but I did find the floral notes of the crunchy pollen were a nice accompaniment to toast and yogurt. The spruce tip honey found its way onto a few other bites but ultimately journeyed back across the country to my fridge in coastal Florida, where I rediscovered it last weekend. I gave it a taste and found that it was even better than before, rich with the depth of the forest and a floral tart finish. I was again inspired to create a forest-driven dessert, and what better time than Christmas to do so?

In Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir, author Iliana Regan describes a cedar ice cream dish she serves at her B&B, Milkweed Inn, that starts with infusing heavy cream with cedar greens and branches. The idea of conifer-infused cream was intriguing, but instead of ice cream, my mind went to crème brûlée. I haven’t made crème brûlée in many years, but it was my favorite “fancy” dessert to whip up when I was a young cook hosting friends for dinner. It’s impressive for how simple it is to prepare, and I thought it would provide a good blank canvas. My local hiking trail begins under a stand of towering pine (likely slash pine, though pines can be tough to identify) so I headed out to collect some fresh bright green pine needles and sappy, sticky pollen cones.

I used a recipe from Natasha’s Kitchen for the crème brûlée as the base, omitting the vanilla and subbing in pine-infused cream and pine sugar. To make the pine cream, I crushed the pine needles and pollen cones with a mortar and pestle (crushing releases natural oils and a heady intense citrus aroma) and gently heated some organic heavy cream until it was steaming. I added the needles and pollen cones to the cream and let it cool, then refrigerated the mixture overnight. I wanted to derive as much pine flavor as possible, so I also decided to make pine sugar, using my spice grinder to blitz about a quarter cup of pine needles with organic cane sugar and let that sit to infuse overnight. The following day, I strained the pine needles and pollen cones from the cream, and sifted the pine sugar to remove larger needle pieces.

Pine nut brittle made with fermented spruce tip honey and pine sugar

At this point, I still had not decided how I was going to highlight the fermented spruce tip honey. I thought about simply sweetening the custard mixture with both the pine sugar and the spruce tip honey but knew the nuances of the honey would be lost in the mix. I also considered just drizzling a bit of the honey on the finished crème brûlée, but that felt sort of unimaginative and could possibly compromise the crunchy pine sugar crust. My mind moved to making some kind of brittle/candied nut component using the spruce tip honey as the sweetener, and was reaching for the bag of hazelnuts in the pantry when I remembered that I had a precious tiny bag of California pine nuts in the freezer. This was a great aha! moment: another pine input for the coniferous crème brûlée! I set a cast iron skillet over medium heat, melted a pat of butter and added a few tablespoons each of fermented spruce tip honey and pine sugar, cooked for a few minutes until it became a cohesive syrup, and then added my gently toasted pine nuts. I cooked the mixture for roughly 5 minutes, stirring constantly as it thickened, and then poured it out onto a buttered piece of parchment paper. I sprinkled with a little more pine sugar and a pinch of flaky Jacobsen salt. (Jacobsen is an Oregon-based salt manufacturer nestled into Netarts Bay, whose facility I visited on my trip, leaving $60 poorer and with a “chef’s” tub of chunky Oregonian salt.) The brittle turned out delicious; the floral spruce-tip honey flavor was pronounced & the pine nuts were tender and nutty encased in the rich pine-scented crunchy candy coating.

The custard baked up beautifully in my terracotta ramekins, which turned out to be the perfect vessel visually as the color contrasted nicely with the pistachio-green custard. After awaiting the necessary chilling time, I sprinkled the tops of the custard with more pine sugar and torched it. I garnished with with jagged bits of pine nut brittle and took the crème brûlée outside for a photo shoot, setting the scene by adorning a naturally-lit stump with some pine branches and cones.

Finally, it was time for the first bite. The thick pine sugar crust crackled perfectly as my spoon broke the surface. The rich custard hit my palate with forest, citrusy and herbaceous and almost slightly mentholated, but balanced by the decadence of heavy cream and burnt sugar. The textural contrast between the spruce honey & pine nut brittle, pine sugar crust, and creamy pine custard was delightful. My husband said it tasted like Christmas (exactly what I was going for!) and mumbled something about Michelin stars between bites. Making food like this really feels like making art. Inspired by the forest, from the towering redwoods and spruce trees from the coasts of California & Oregon, and partnered with the scrubby pollinating pines of coastal Florida, coniferous crème brûlée is a coast-to-coast custard homage to magnificent evergreen trees featuring fermented spruce tip honey, pine nut brittle, pine pollen cream & a crackly pine sugar crust. Thank you for taking the time to read about it—please subscribe if you’re interested in reading more about cooking with wild, fermented & foraged ingredients!