Wednesday, December 17, 2014

Flan

I always use the holidays as an excuse to make flan. It's not a particularly winter-y type of dessert but given that this time of the year is filled with large social gatherings, it's always a good time for my favorite dessert. I've adapted the recipe from a cookbook I bought Jeff many years ago, and it's served us well ever since! This recipe makes 8 servings.

Caramel 
  • 1/3 cup water
  • 1 cup of sugar
  • 2 tablespoons light corn syrup
  • 1/4 teaspoon lemon juice
  1. Combine everything in a light-colored pan and heat over the stove on medium-high heat. This process will take about 8 minutes – the mixture will start to turn colors and you will wonder if it’s done yet, even though the color is not quite golden. It’s not! You’ll know when the color is right.
  2. Keep swirling the pan until you get that color change. Once it turns that honey-caramel color, remove the pan from heat and distribute caramel into ramekins. The book says to keep it heated for another 4-5 minutes after the color change but I did that and it started burning after a minute so I would recommend removing it almost immediately.
Custard
  • 1 1/2 cups milk (The recipe stipulates whole, I’m a rebel so I use 1%.)
  • 1 1/2 cups light cream
  • 3 large eggs plus 2 large yolks
  • 1/3 cup sugar (The recipe stipulates 2/3 cup sugar…again, I’m a rebel so I cut it in half. I feel like 1/3 cup is plenty sweet, especially with the caramel, but you can adjust this to your preference.)
  • 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • Pinch salt
  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Heat milk and cream over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until steam appears. You don’t have to heat it until it’s boiling. Once it’s finished, remove from heat.
  3. Whisk the eggs, yolk, sugar, vanilla, and salt in a large bowl until just combined.
  4. Gently whisk the warm milk into the eggs.
  5. Strain the mixture through a fine-mesh sieve – this part is particularly important to me and I actually strain it a few times, just to make sure the mixture is smooth and clump free.
  6. Bring 2 quarters of water to a boil. Fold a dish towel to fit the bottom of a large baking dish or roasting pan and position it in the pan.
  7. Divide custard mixture among the ramekins and place them on the towel in the pan.
  8. Fill the pan with boiling water to reach halfway up the sides of the ramekins; cover the entire pan loosely with aluminum foil so steam can escape.
  9. Bake until a paring knife inserted halfway comes out clean. The book says it’s about 35-40 minutes but I have found that it’s closer to 45 minutes. It might just be my oven though.
Once it's ready, loosen the edges with a ramekin, flip it over onto a plate, and serve!





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