Crema De Vie recipe
courtesy of Cocina Cubana Club (please join) / Oscar, Pascual Perez and chef Sonia Martinez

This recipe and the following info on using raw eggs were two messages posted in the Akaka Falls Inn Cooking Club by Oscar and me (Sonia M.) sometime ago. It is another one of those homemade aperitifs that were so popular in Cuba.

For the uninitiated this is a sort of traditional Cuban after dinner drink made up of:

One can condensed milk
One can rum
one can simple sugar syrup (**)

(**)using the empty condensed milk can, mix:
Two cans white sugar
one can water
lemon rind
cinnamon stick

Boil until it becomes a syrup. Let cool and discard cinnamon stick and lemon rinds.

Mix all ingredients in a bottle along with two egg yolks (whipped) and two or three large sticks of cinnamon.

Refrigerate for two or three days and it is ready to drink.

WARNING: It is SWEET and it can be habit forming (you just can't put it down). Serve in shot glasses and sip. It is good anytime.

SAFE EGG YOLKS:
Heat 2 egg yolks and 1/4 cup of liquid from the recipe, add 1/2 tsp sugar in a small skillet over very low heat, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan constantly with a spatula. At the first sign of thickening, remove the pan from the heat, but continue stirring and dip the pan bottom in a larger pan of cold water to stop the cooking. Use in the recipe instead of raw yolks.

Destroying bacteria is a matter of both time and temperature. You do not even have to get the yolks to the salmonella instant-kill temperature of 160oF (71oC). Holding them at slightly lower temperatures for several minutes is just as effective. Yolks are pasteurized by holding them for 3.5 minutes at 140oF (60oC), which is not very hot- hot tap water is in this range. Eggs don't scramble (cook) until about 180oF (82oC). So there is some margin here.

SOURCE: COOKWISE Cookbook- by Shirley O. Corriher-
page 195

PS- It is well worth the effort to go through the pasteurization of the eggs. The Crema de Vie is very good!


 

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Instructions on How to make an authentic Cuban crema de vie recipe / receta / recetas.