The Best Flan Recipe | Dessert Recipes | Chef Zee Cooks

• servings: 6 servings
• active time: 15 minutes
• total time: 1 hour

Ingredients

4 Whole Eggs

1 ½ cups Evaporated Milk (1 can)

12 oz Sweet Condensed Milk (1 can)

1 tbsp Vanilla Extract

¼ tsp Salt

1 cup Sugar

2 tbsp water

Directions

Set Oven to 325 degrees F

Add baking tray with water and let it warm up

Add sugar to a saucepan along with 2 tbsp of water and begin caramelizing sugar over medium heat. Do not mix or stir until sugar has melted to prevent sugar from crystallizing

In a room temperature cake pan, add caramel and be sure to coat the sides of the pan. Set aside and let caramel harden to a candy. Be careful not to burn yourself with the caramel since it is SUPER HOT

In a mixing bowl, add 4 eggs and gently whisk together. Then add sweet condensed milk & salt and continue to whisk gently until well combined. Now add evaporated milk and vanilla extract. Just like before, whisk gently until well combined

Once the flan custard mixture has been mixed, pass through a sieve into a large measuring cup. This will insure that your flan is super silky in texture and bakes perfectly

Afterwards, transfer the flan mixture into a candied cake pan. Then carefully place the cake pan into a baking tray with water-- a bain-marie. By now, the oven should have come up to temperature and the water should have warmed up.

Bake flan for 40-50 mins but do not exceed an hour. The longer you bake the flan, the firmer your flan will be. When taking your flan out of the oven, it should jiggle just a bit. No worries, your flan will continue to set as it cools.

Once your flan has finished baking, Set flan onto a cooling rack and let it cool and set for at least 2 hours or until the flan has reached room temperature

Now that the flan has reached room temperature, wiggle the cake pan and watch as the flan releases itself from the sides. If the flan is still stuck, feel free to take a sharp knife and gently scrape the sides of the pan to release the flan. Once the sides are released, carefully flip flan over into a deep dish so that it catches all of the caramel

Chill flan for at least 4 hours before serving. The flavors will continue to set along with the custard

Notes

Tip #1: Don’t over beat your eggs. When making a custard, you don’t actually want to whip up too much air into the batter. I find that beating them just enough so combine the egg yolk and egg white is all that you need

Tip #2: Use sweetened condensed milk to sweeten your flan. The flavor is superior and ultimately results in a silkier custard than using regular granulated sugar

Tip #3: Use evaporated vs. regular milk. Much like the sweetened condensed milk, this gives the flan better flavor

Tip #4: Use a high quality vanilla extract to flavor your flan. This is what takes your flan from good to superb!

Tip #5: After mixing all of the ingredients together for the flan custard, pass the custard mixture through a sieve. This will give you the ultimate silk smooth custard. Leave those unmixed pieces behind!

Tip 6: When making the caramel for the flan, keep a close eye. Know that you can control just how deep the flavor of the caramel is. The darker the color, the richer the flavor. I personally like my caramel a light amber to medium amber in color

Tip 7: The caramel is the hardest and trickiest part about making flan. It can crystallize if you’re not careful and you can even burn yourself. Make sure that the little bit of water covers the sugar completely. Use a wet pastry brush to dissolve any sugar that gets on the sides of the saucepan. Don’t worry if you have to start all over again. It happens to the best of us!

Tip 8: When adding the caramel to your cake pan or baking dish, run the caramel at least halfway up the sides. This will make your baking pan nonstick. This means you won’t even have to run a knife through the sides of the pan to get the flan out. However, be careful when working with hot caramel as you can easily burn yourself.

Tip 9: Bake your flan in a bain-marie. As you’re preparing the custard mixture, preheat the oven with the larger baking pan with water. This way the water is already warm and up to temperature when you’re ready to start baking the flan

Tip 10: Let the flan sit in the fridge for a few hours so that the flavors settle and come alive!

Nutrition

• Calories: 200
• Total Fat: 20 g