Here’s how to make “Leche Flan”
Ingredients:
* 14 oz Sweet and Condensed Milk
* 12 oz vol Evaporated Milk
* 8 eggs
* 1.5 teaspoons vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup sugar
Directions:
Only the yolks of the eggs will be used for this recipe. Use 1.5 teaspoons of vanilla, and caramelize 1/2 cup of sugar. You can use any bake ware capable of taking 350 degree heat, if its a smooth bottom the caramelized sugar spreads easier. Use a bunt pan cause it is pretty snazzy looking. Notice the baking dish that you use must fit inside of the other container, with room to fit water up to the level the flan will be. Separate the egg yolks. Add the egg yolks to the bowl. Add Sweet and condensed milk, evaporated milk, and 1.5 teaspoons of vanilla. Set the oven for 350F around this point. Set the bowl of flan mixture aside. After you have mixed the main stuff together, it is time to the caramelize the sugar. Once again, I use 1/2 cup of sugar, but sometimes if I use a smoother dish, I’ll use 1/3ish. No big deal really either way. Start with a sauce pan. Put sugar in sauce pan over low heat. LOW HEAT, especially for beginners, cause its really easy to burn sugar if you are not careful. At first, just swirl the pan around to keep sugar moving. If you use a spoon, the sugar will start to clump up right away and its a bit more difficult.
After it starts to melt, use a spoon and keep sugar moving.
Eventually you’ll see the sugar starting to really melt, turning to a liquid – be careful, it is very hot. Keep stirring, breaking up chunks of sugar, and keeping everything moving. Once the sugar starts to get light brownish, BUT NOT BURNT (be careful, it happens quick), take the sugar off and QUICKLY pour it into your bake-ware along the bottom. Quickly move around the dish (DON’T TOUCH IT WITH A SPOON OR YOUR HANDS/etc) until you have coated as much of the pan as possible. Careful! Different temperature variations can break glass. You might be best to let the sugar cool down a bit before you put it into a fridge. With the silicone, I do it right away. You want the sugar to cool down a bit, if it’s hot when you poor the flan mixture into the pan it might curdle the eggs/cook too fast/etc. Now, after you have beaten the ingredients for the flan together, you might very well end up with foam on top. This wont hurt anything, however, as you might imagine, the foam offers up more surface area, and so if you have foam on the top of your flan, you tend to end up with a burn layer/crust on the bottom of your flan (you flip the container over to serve). If you want to skip the next step, feel free! But, I don’t like to have that crust in my flan, so…I don’t know what this thing is, but it will work. It will act as a strainer, and all (or close to all) of the bubbles/foam will get stuck in the strainer. This makes a big difference in my opinion, but really might not be worth the effort, it is up to you. I got a bit impatient, and some bubbles got through. Using my fingers as a sponge, I cleaned most of these up actually, so it has a smooth/glassy top. Now, put the flan pan into the other container, which will contain water. I pour the water in AFTER I put the flan pan in, as it leaves out the guesswork as to how much water I will need. Fill it up as much as possible.Then put the flan in the oven you had pre-heated to 350F. Now, I normally cook the flan for 50 minutes before I check it (insert knife 1/3 of the way from the edge, if it comes out clean, you are good to go (or at least almost 95% clean). BUT, it normally takes around an hour an 10 minutes, this of course dependent on your oven, the bake-ware you use, and MAINLY the volume of water you have around your flan dish – the more water, the longer it takes to heat up! Once the flan is baked, just take it out, let it sit for maybe 10, 20 minutes, and put it in the fridge FOR A GOOD 2 HOURS! It has to be cool, set, etc. Its better tasting that way, and the texture is better.Run a knife along the edge of the pan, as best you can – at least pierce the top layer, as it is the only part that will be really crusted to the pan.
Put a plate on top of flan pan, and then invert quickly.
Allow the caramel to run onto flan, so wait a couple of seconds before lifting it off. ta da! Notice the sugar piled up on top, this wouldn’t be there if you were using a glass pan, as it would have stuck to the pan. I personally like it, I use it to garnish the flan. Quickly rearranged the sugar: And there is the finished flan.
Now that you have learned how to make flan, please be sure to view these other tart recipes and these flan recipes.
