Kris: I’ve said it many times before, I love cooking with native Australian ingredients. Roasted wattle seed is an amazing product to use in desserts. It is the roasted seed of the Acacia victoriae, which grows in Central Australia. It has amazing coffee, chocolate and hazelnut characteristics. You can buy it pre-gound or as whole seeds. If you buy whole seeds just crush them using a mortar and pestle. It is available at a lot of speciality spice stores or on-line.

Wattle Seed Creme Brulee

(serves 2-4 depending on the size of your ramekins)

3oo ml cream

1 vanilla bean 

25g wattle seed

3 egg yolks

60 g castor sugar

Method

Pre heat an oven to 120 C

Split the vanilla bean 

Add it with the wattle seed to the cream in a saucepan

Bring to the boil slowly

Take it off the heat

Beat the sugar and egg yolks for a few minutes in a mixing bowl

Strain the cream 

Whisk the cream with the egg and sugar, adding the liquid slowly

Whisk for a few minutes

Place the mixture into a pouring jug and pour into ramekins

Place the ramekins in an oven tray and fill half way up the sides of the ramekins with boiling water

Cook in the oven for 40 minutes 

Remove from the oven and allow to cool

Place in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours before serving

Sprinkle brown sugar on top

Using a brulee torch, caramelize the sugar

Serve with fresh berries

Kris: I matched the dessert with Emerson’s London Porter. It is a 4.9% Porter from one of New Zealand’s great craft breweries. The roasty chocolate and coffee notes in the beer complimented the flavours of the wattle seed in the Creme Brulee.

Caroline: Delicious. It tastes so good with about a whole punnet of blueberries thrown into the mix as well! I love a good brulee, the crunchy sugar top and the creamy insides, yum. The wattle seed had a coffee bitter-cocoa-hazelnut character, and how can you go wrong with that? I thought the beer was a good match, but since I DO have a sweet tooth (unlike Kris) I thought it might be better with something richer and sweeter like the Hitachino Milk Stout or a Chocolate Stout. But hey, that’s just me.

 Kris: Any excuse for a stout hey Caroline?

Caroline: Pretty much