Your Best Raspberries

To make these custard cups, you'll need: brown sugar, milk, cream cheese, flour, sugar, egg, cornstarch, raspberries and vanilla.  

The custard starts with sugar, eggs, flour and cornstarch.  

Then, of course, some milk.  

After a few minutes on the stove, the custard thickened up beautifully -- silky smooth!  

The "secret" ingredient: cream cheese!  

Look at that texture.  

Aren't these raspberries gorgeous?  

We used six little ramekins, but you could probably squeeze everything into four larger cups if you're feeling hedonistic.  

You want to make sure to nestle in as many raspberries as possible!  

Picture perfect.  

After a quick brulée, we sprinkled on the brown sugar and then popped them under the broiler again for about 30 seconds.  

Little cups of joy.  

The ingredients for the muffins: raspberries, buttermilk, egg, sea salt, sugar, creme fraiche, baking soda, vanilla butter and flour (plus baking powder, which didn't make it into the shot).  

Concentrating very hard on cutting up the butter.  

A river of melting butter.  

After a few minutes, specks will start to form, and you have brown butter!  

Sifting the dry ingredients is one of the techniques that keeps these muffins light and downy.  

Don't you just want to dive into this pile of creme fraiche?  

Folding the brown butter into the batter.  

And then the dry ingredients.  

Time to add lots of plump raspberries.  

Amanda gets ready to fill the muffin cups (we lined them with paper for easy removal).  

They're beautiful even before they're baked.  

These smelled amazing when they came out of the oven.  

A little butter never hurts...