Flan

Hey All,

For once in a long time, we opted to go out to eat instead of cooking. It made me kind of sad that 4 of us could've ate for the price of one meal =(. Once we got home I decided to make some flan to eat up the many eggs we bought on super sale. It came out nice and soft, but a little bit curdled on the top as I didn't have a roasting pan large enough to set the baking pan in a water bath. In any case, following the recipe here (1), this is the flan I made:

• 3/4 cup Sugar
• 1/4 cup Water

Place the sugar and water to boil under high heat in a small sauce pan while swirling. Let the syrup sit on heat after boiling until browns. If you don't have it on high heat it won't brown quickly/at all, which is what happened to me, and so I had to turn it up to hight after a long time of waiting to brown. Pour while still hot into the bottom of a large round baking pan.

• 1/2 + 1/2 cup Sugar
• 2 cup Heavy Cream
• 2 cup 2% Milk
• 4 Large Eggs
• 6 Egg Yolks
• 2 tsp Vanilla

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Bring 1/2 cup sugar, cream, and milk to boil in a large saucepan while stirring over high heat. Reduce heat after boiling to low and let simmer for 3 minutes. Take off heat to cool to warm. Beat eggs in a mixer with other 1/2 cup of sugar until well combined and pale. Slowly add warm milk mixture to eggs while keeping the mixer on using a ladle. Add vanilla. Pour through a sieve into another bowl to remove chunks of cooked egg from the custard. Pour the custard into baking pan and set the baking pan into a water bath (larger bowl filled with water. (I could only use a pie pan and wasn't able to cover the entire height of the custard, which you should do if you can. A roasting pan as noted in the original recipe (1) would be recommended.)

Place the baking pan and water bath in the oven and bake for ~1 hr or until a knife comes out clean. Cool to room temperature and then place in the fridge, plastic wrapped, overnight. You can then either invert onto another plate or just eat it straight out of the baking pan, which you want.

I changed mostly the baking method from the original as I only had a large pyrex pan. Hence the need to baking longer. Also, since I had my syrup on low instead of high, I lost a bit of it through evaporation and couldn't coat the bottom. Costwise it was cheap. Cheap eggs and milk lessened the costs to around $4 for a large serving of flan. Hope you enjoy the recipe too!

Cheers,
---Chris

Cites:
(1) http://burntlumpia.typepad.com/burnt_lumpia/2007/05/leche_flan_less.html