Trail Brûlée with Passion Fruit and Berries
Instant vanilla custard, freeze-dried berries, and a sugar crust you crunch instead of torch.
- calories
- 430
- weight
- 3.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 134
- protein
- 8 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 0 min
- total time
- 5 min
- water
- 250 ml cold
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dessert
- No cook
- Cold soak
- Backpacking
- Car camping
- Bikepacking
- Canoe / raft
- Vegetarian
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- Eat in the bag
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Dump and stir
Ingredients
| Instant vanilla pudding mix | 1 box (about 3.4 oz) | the instant kind, not cook-and-serve |
|---|---|---|
| Whole milk powder | 1/3 cup | replaces the cream in the original custard |
| Freeze-dried raspberries | 1/3 cup | |
| Freeze-dried blackberries | 1/3 cup | |
| Passion fruit powder | 2 tsp | granadilla if you can find it; mango powder also works |
| Powdered orange drink mix | 1 tbsp | stands in for the juice of one orange |
| Turbinado sugar | 2 tbsp | coarse, so it stays crunchy |
| Salt | a pinch |
Method
- Put the pudding mix, milk powder, and salt in a wide-mouth jar or freezer bag. Add 250 ml of cold water.
- Shake or stir hard for a full minute. Lumps here stay lumps, so keep at it until it is smooth.
- Set it aside for five minutes. It will go from thin to spoonable on its own.
- In a mug or the corner of a bag, crush the freeze-dried berries lightly and toss with the passion fruit powder, orange drink mix, and a splash of water. Wait two minutes for the berries to soften into a rough compote.
- Spoon the fruit over the custard and scatter the turbinado sugar on top. Eat it right away, while the sugar is still loose grit.
A real crème brûlée needs eggs, cream, an oven, and a torch. None of that goes in a pack. What survives the translation is the structure: cool vanilla custard underneath, something sharp and fruity on top, and a layer of sugar you break through. Instant pudding plus whole milk powder gets you the first part cold, with no stove and no fridge. Full-fat milk powder matters here — skim sets up thin and tastes like paper.
The fruit layer is doing the job the caramel does at home: cutting the sweetness. Freeze-dried berries rehydrate in about two minutes and hold their shape, and the passion fruit and orange powders bring back the acid you would have gotten from a squeezed orange. The turbinado never gets torched, so scatter it at the last second. Sitting in the fruit juice, it dissolves in under a minute.
Packing
Pudding mix, milk powder, and salt premixed in one bag. Berries, fruit powders, and drink mix in a second. Sugar in a third small one, sealed tight, because damp sugar goes to syrup and you lose the crunch.
Variations
- Cold nights: mix with cold water anyway, then sit the jar in your pack for ten minutes rather than adding hot water, which keeps it from setting.
- A spoon of coconut milk powder in the base makes it richer and heavier.
- Swap the berries for freeze-dried mango and skip the orange mix.
https://meny.no/oppskrifter/dessert/creme-brulee-med-grenadilla