I am going to start my first recipe with Flan. Why Flan? Because it’s one of my most favorite desserts, and also it’s so easy to make. The only important thing about making flan is that you have to let it sit in the fridge over night (or at least 10-12 hours), and if you’re impatient like me, it’s so hard to look at it on the fridge and not trying to unmold it. But listen to me, please don’t. Otherwise you won’t have your beautiful flan, or perhaps no flan at all.
Flan is originally a Latin American dessert. It’s very rich and creamy and so similar to cream caramel. It has caramel on bottom of the mold and once you flip it and it comes out upside down, you will have beautiful caramel sauce on top of it. I really like using 3 kinds of milk in my recipe: sweetened milk, evaporated milk and 2% milk. Why? Because it’s giving me the texture that I desire, a creamy clear beautiful flan without any hols in it as you can see in the photos. I also used Rum in my recipe because why not? I like booze and sweets so lets combine them.
Ingredients:
Evaporated milk: 1 can (12 -oz)
Sweetened milk: 1 can (10-oz)
Milk: 1/4 cup
Rum: 1/4 cup
Salt: pinch
Eggs: 2
Egg yolk: 3
Sugar: 1/2 cup
Water: 3 tbsp
Instruction
First Preheat your oven to 300°F then start preparing your mold. You can use ramekins or metal mold. ( I used metal mold for this recipe). Second step is that you need to make the caramel. Put sugar and water in the saucepan on medium heat on stove. Do not touch the caramel till all the sugar dissolved. Then start stiring it. That’s the tricky part, be carful not to burn the sugar, you want a brown color but not too dark.You can also find out if it’s burnt from the smell. If you burnt the caramel by any chances, please do yourself a favor and don’t use it. It will just give a really bittery burnty taste to your flan and you definitely won’t like it.
Once the caramel is done, pour it in to the molds just to cover the bottom. you can put the mold aside now and start the mixture.
In a big bowl whisk the eggs and egg yolks, jut enough to mix well. Then add the evaporated milk, sweetened milk, milk and salt. At the end add the rum. Whisk everything until incorporated. Strain mixture through fine strainer, this step is really important because it will give you a very nice consistence texture.
Pour the mixture in the mold on top of the caramel.
For baking Flan as same as cream caramel you need water bath in the oven. On a baking tray pour hot water and place your molds in the tray.
Bake the flan between 60-90 minutes. Baking time is totally depends on how deep and big is your mold so my suggestion is to check it after 45 minutes. To make sure it’s baked shake the mold, if the custard is still liquidy, it’s not done. Once you shake it and see the custard is set, then it's done. It will continue cooking even once you take it out of the oven. So don't over bake it because you ruining it's texture.
Take it out of the oven, wipe the mold and once it’s cool down pop it in to the fridge and let it sit over night.
To take it out of the mold, if your mold is metal you can heat the bottom of the pan for a second on the stove.( seriously just a second is enough otherwise you melt your Flan). Or the safer way is to boil water and pour the water in a bowl, then put the bottom of the pan in hot water for couple seconds. If it’s still sticking on the side, get a sharp knife and carefully slide the edges of the pan.
Then put your serving plate on top of the mold and flip it (that’s my favorite part).
Once the Flan is out (and I know you’re excited) you might still have some caramel on bottom of the pan. If you desire more caramel on your flan, just heat it up more and once the caramel melts again, just pour it on top of the Flan. This recipe will serve 8-9 people and you can keep It in the fridge for around 4 days.
Enjoy your delicious creamy flan, نوش جان
