I decided to break them in (i.e. season them) this morning, so I soaked them in water overnight. I learned the hard way (a number of years ago) that if you do not properly soak them before the first outing, you will crack (or possibly even chip) the glaze, and render them useful only as paperclip, thumbtack, and rubber-band receptacles...
After soaking them, I wanted to cook something in them gently. Some kind of baked eggs would be very nice...only one problem: I forgot to buy eggs while grocery shopping yesterday (and only had a single egg in the fridge). Ok, well, an egg can be stretched by making a custard....
So, that's what I did. Made a rich custard by mixing the egg with about 1/3 cup of half & half; added some superfine sugar, a little nutmeg, and vanilla. That was all the necessary stuff, but being the amateur culinary alchemist (i.e. spagyrist) I am, I also added a couple of drops of Dr. Oetker's arrack (arrak, in German) flavoring--which must be getting pretty old because it's not even available on their German Web site anymore. I also added (less than) a drop of orange essential oil.
Now, to help fill the dishes even a little more, into each one I put a dried piece of bread (that I cut out of the center of the ciabatta rolls I use for our weekday sandwiches). After spraying each dish with Pam, I put in the bread, and poured the custard mixture over it. Then I sifted icing sugar onto each one and popped them into the cold oven. I set the temperature at 350º, turned the oven on, and put the timer on 15 min.
When I pulled them out, the custard had set nicely, but the icing sugar had not caramelized as I would have liked (of course, that's a lot to expect from a 350º oven). So, being concerned with using too high of a temp during the seasoning process, instead of putting them under the broiler, I pulled out my handy butane torch and burnt that sugar properly!
They were a nice Sunday morning treat with a couple of caffe lattes (and now those cazuelitas are primed for preparing and serving tapas on warm summer evenings in the backyard--if it ever gets warm here again).
