Expert Answer:

Lisa Featherby, Gourmet Traveller food editor, writes:
"Unfortunately, you'll always have caramel left in your ramekin or dariole after turning out a crème caramel. It’s the nature of the beast: caramel sets hard and likes to stick when cold. If you can turn out a crème caramel with a nice top layer of caramel-scented cream and some caramel runs over to sauce the crème, then you’re off to a good start.

There are a couple of things you can do to remove any extra caramel from the mould:
a) heat your oven before turning your crème caramels out and return the ramekins to the oven to melt any caramel left
b) have a bath of boiling water ready in a baking dish and sit the empty moulds in it for a minute or two which will also melt some of the caramel down.

Take into consideration that you probably won’t extract all the caramel, but a little extra is always better than none.

Here are some more caramel recipes you can try."