This is one of my husband’s favourite desserts. I am not this dish’s biggest fan and the only one I liked so far was one I had in the Philippines. I made this for his birthday in February and it was a big hit with my friends. Leche Flan.
Leche Flan
I changed a recipe I found online because I didn’t have all of the ingredients from the recipe. I used the recipe on Mangoes and Palm Trees, we don’t have palm sugar in South Africa so I just used regular sugar and I didn’t use lemon/lime juice.
Traditionally a Leche Flan gets steamed but I don’t have one of those fancy steamers, I don’t even think we can purchase them here in South Africa, you can however cook this in a water bath. So be prepared with hot water. Preheat your oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit)
Ingredients:
Caramel:
1 cup of Sugar
1/3 cup of Water
Flan:
3 large Egg Yolks
2 large, whole Eggs
1 can of Condensed Milk
1 can of Evaporated Milk (Ideal milk as we call it in SA)
1 Vanilla pod
Method:
Caramel:
Making the caramel was the biggest challenge for me at first, I don’t know how many severely sticky or burnt pans I had to scrub, it was not a pretty sight. I even burnt my poor finger into oblivion over Christmas 2013 trying to do this.
Jayzel, a friend of my husband and I, lives in the Philippines, her tips on how to make the caramel is to use low heat and not to stir bur rather tilt the pan.
Add the sugar and water into the pan over a low heat until all the sugar is melted, keep tilting the pan, when the sugar starts turning a golden colour it’s ready – quickly pour it into your oven dish. You have to be fast removing it from the heat, I learned there is a fine line between caramel and burnt!
Flan:
This is the really easy part. Slice the vanilla pod open and scrape out all of the seeds, add into a mixing bowl. Add all the other ingredients and mix them really well. Pour this mixture through a sieve into your oven dish on top of the caramel.
Place your oven dish into a bigger dish and fill it up to 3/4 the height of the dish with your flan with boiling water. Loosely place tin foil over, don’t seal it, the steam forming should have a gap to escape.
Place your contraption into the oven and let it cook for about 60 minutes. You can check if it is cooked by lightly shaking the dish, if the entire flan is sturdy and not liquidy or wobbly it’s cooked. Take it out of the oven and let it sit until the water-bath’s water is room temperature. Loosen your flan around the sides of the dish, place a serving dish over and very quickly turn it over. The last time I did this I needed a fresh set of clothing and I had to wash the kitchen floor, so be really fast and really careful.
You can refrigerate the flan before you turn it over if you want to cook it the day before 🙂
 |
| This isn’t the best picture or best looking flan in the world but at least it tasted nice 😛 |
