Anyway, as much as I like a nice caramel syrup, it's a bit of work to make the caramel, mix the flan, bake chill and unmold. A simple dessert shouldn't be that much work. Crème brûlée skips the caramel-making and unmolding steps and replaces it with sprinkling raw sugar over the top and melting and browning with a butane torch. The problem is I don't have a butane torch, so the last time I made it I used my 30" flame weeder. I felt a bit powerful using it indoors--over a very large sheet pan mind you--but worried about setting my kitchen cabinets on fire.
Still, there's no substitute for that pleasant crack as you peck with your spoon against the top of the crème brûlée, however I have an additional complaint: most crème brûlée recipes call for whole eggs, plus additional egg YOLKS. What does one do with those extra white? Yes, I know, angel food cake, but that takes almost a dozen and not 3 or 4. Don't even joke to me about throwing the whites away. And I NEVER diet, but all that heavy cream is just, well, too HEAVY sometimes. I want the ease and crust of crème brûlée, but the lightness of flan. Is that too much to ask?
Last year, I probably printed out five or six flan and crème brûlée recipes and made several of them. All tasted good, but were enough trouble that I didn't try to make them again until recently. Then, I found a recipe that included less cream, and added in one of my favorite ingredients: sweetened condensed milk. I have my mother's habit of calling this simply "Eagle Brand" after the popular brand, which may stem from the fact that my Mom ate it by the spoonfuls when she was pregnant with me. I sometimes do that too, when no one is looking.
So I've experimented with this sweetened condensed milk version of flan, using lowfat milk, half and half, and sometimes smallish amounts of heavy cream depending upon what I have in the house. Sometimes it's lighter, sometimes creamier. One egg per cup of dairy seems to be about right; that's about 1 cup of eggs for 4 cups of milk, etc. I changed the combination without measuring, and it hasn't seemed to impact the results. No cooking is involved in making the flan mixture, just mix well and pour into custard cups. The biggest pain in the whole process is the water bath, but if you can't boil water, you shouldn't be in the kitchen anyway.
The last challenge was to create that nice sugar crust without resorting to WMDs like my flame thrower, I mean flame weeder (which I just learned today has been recalled for safety reasons). I'm a little slow sometimes, but it hit me one day when I opened up the oven door to broil something. That lovely line of flames at the top of my gas stove. I lined up my finished flan on a pan, put it on the very top rack about 2 inches from the flame and about three minutes later, perfectly melted and slightly browned sugar. (I also learned today that you must use a sturdy restaurant-quality sheet pan or else it may warp and all the sugar turn black and catch fire. If that happens, just place an ordinary plate over the custard dish to smother the flames and turn on the overhead vent before the smoke alarm goes off.)
So here is my recipe for flan brûlée. I Googled it and no one seems to have come up with anything quite like it. Sorry it is a day late for Valentine's Day, but I was eating some for Valentine's Day and didn't have time to blog about it!
Jen’s Flan Brûlée
1/4 cup white sugar
3-4 eggs (to equal 1 cup)
14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk
18 oz. milk/cream (combination of 12 oz. can evaporated milk, lowfat milk, cream or half and half depending on desired richness)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
6 tablespoons raw or demerara sugar
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
In a large bowl, beat eggs. Beat in condensed milk, other milk and vanilla until smooth.
Pour egg mixture into 6 individual custard cups. Place cups in a large baking dish and fill dish with hot water about halfway up sides of custard cups (you might want to place the pan in the oven first and then immediately fill with hot water from a kettle.
Bake in preheated oven 60 minutes or until set in center (test with toothpick). Let cool and refrigerate at least 1 hour.
Heat broiler to high. Place custard cups on a metal sheet pan and sprinkle each evenly with 1 tablespoon of raw sugar. Put pan on broiler rack at highest or second highest level and broil until sugar melts and just starts to brown, about 5 minutes. Watch carefully! Cool slightly and serve.
COFFEE FLAN: Dissolve 4 ½ teaspoons instant coffee or espresso in 4 teaspoons hot water. Cool and add to egg mixture. Add cinnamon, if desired.
2 comments:
Very delicious.
so next time i see you, and your eyebrows are singed off, i'll know why.
recipe looks great, we will try it.
Post a Comment