Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Easy Individual Flan

It's that time again.  My turn for me to make dessert for my dinner group, The Dinner Divas.  I think I am getting better but I still can't help feeling nervous that it's going to turn out awful.  I have to say that although this started off a little shaky, it turned out really well!

I found this recipe at grouprecipes.com.  Although the custard came out excellent the caramel recipe was missing a main ingredient. The recipe stated to melt the sugar in a preheated pan until it melts and becomes caramel.  Well, that just didn't happen.  After speaking with some more experienced bakers, the sugar needed to melt in water to become caramel. What a mess.  My poor all-clad pot was put to the test and I was able to get the sugar out after it hardened in my pot.  It took a while but I saved my precious pot.   Luckily I had caramel sauce and butterscotch sauce (for ice cream) in my fridge and I used that instead.  Turned out fabulous!  The custard was perfect and everyone liked it.  What a surprise, right? Ha ha ha!

I am going to put a link to the recipe if you'd like to see it yourself.  I did leave a comment there so no one has the same issue I did.  Hopefully everyone else knows better or knows to read the comments.  I am going to give you the recipe without the sauce though because I didn't get to try it the right way.  The recipe states that it will fill 6 ramekins.  Maybe they are very large ramekins because I used 8 regular sized ramekins and I had so much of the custard that I threw half of it away.  I would have made another large one but I didn't have enough caramel.  I baked mine for about 1 hour until they were no longer jiggly in the middle. 

Easy Flan Recipe

From GroupRecipes.com

Ingredients: 

Prepared Caramel Sauce
6 large eggs
1/2 cup sugar
1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
2 - 13 oz cans evaporated milk
1 teaspoon vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.  Pour 2-3 tablespoons caramel into each ramekin, tilting to swirl the caramel around the sides.  Using a hand held mixer, blend the eggs together.  Mix in the milks then slowly add in the sugar and then the vanilla.  Blend until smooth after each ingredient is added.

Pour custard into caramel lined ramekins.  Place ramekins in a large glass or ceramic baking dish and fill with about 1-2 inches of hot water.  Bake for 45 minutes in the water bath and check with a knife just to the side of the center.  If the knife comes out clean, it's ready.  Remove and let cool.  Let each ramekin cool in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Invert each ramkekin onto a small plate, the caramel sauce will flow over the custard. 



Click here for a printable version of Easy Individual Flan.

6 comments:

Bob said...

I've never actually had flan, but it looks great!

Pam said...

I love flan but have never made it. I will have to now after seeing this! Great pics!

Danielle said...

I don't know if I've ever eaten flan before...maybe I've tasted it. It looks beautiful and I love your photos!

Julie said...

I should definitely try to make this! Looks amazing.

Culinary Alchemist said...

That Flan looks SO delicious! It's great you had a backup plan... :)

Dry Caramel is tricky, it works for me about 50% of the time. LOL Wet caramel is a little easier, but even it can turn into cement.

Michele said...

Bob/Danielle - I think I only had it once ages ago so I can't remember if I liked it or not.

I'm surprised you all like the pics, thank you all! The first one looks kinda strange and swirly. LOL

Shane - I had no idea there was such a thing as dry caramel. What a disaster!