cuban crème brulée.

I've gotten so cavalier in making my family's recipe for flan that I tried to melt sugar last night during an involved phone conversation with my mother. Needless to say, I had to trash a black burning pan of sugar before I hung up the phone and took time to make another with the perfect golden brown hue. Some images of the originally Spanish crème caramel, at its best:





Custards are not loved by all, and they weren't loved by me until I came into adulthood. Throughout my childhood, I avoided this gelatinous, sometimes spongy and always creamy dessert and its sugary caramel sauce like the plague. I've since wised up to the joys of flan, and I've been making this recipe successfully for two years. Enjoy.

Flan Recipe.

Ingredients

• 2 cups sugar
  
• 6 eggs
• 1 can condensed milk
• 1 can evaporated milk
• 1.25 cups whole milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• (for coffee-flavored flan, add 2 shots of espresso and some fresh ground coffee beans)

Instructions

1. Fill a oven-safe tray large enough to hold your muffin tray/bundt pan with 1" of water and place on center shelf of the oven. Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. While pre-heating, melt sugar over low heat. Do not stir excessively, as stirring causes crystallization. Once liquefied, pour melted sugar on bottom/sides of a large bundt pan or several muffin trays.

3. Blend remainder of ingredients in a blender until mixed. Pour mix into bundt pan or muffin trays and place in tray of water in the oven. Bake until set or when a wooden stick inserted into the flan's center comes out clean (approximately 45-60 minutes for bundt pan, significantly less for muffin trays).

4. Let set in fridge for at least 12 hours and do not flip until you get to your destination. Use a butter knife to separate the custard from the pan. Once flipped, drizzle flan with remainder of syrup.

AMH