Saturday 13 March 2010

Flan - Crème Caramel

Two Spanish desserts in a day. This is the flan, a slowly heated egg custard with a caramel sauce. It's really simple to make. Just remember, don't burn the caramel and don't pour all the hot milk into the eggs at once. the rest is child play.
Ingredients (4 flans):
Caramel
1.5 dl sugar
1 dl water
Flan
300 ml whole milk
2 eggs + 1 yolk
60ml sugar
1 tsp vanilla

Mix the sugar and water. Slowly heat it until it starts bubbling.

The second it turns light brown, remove it from the heat and stir it lightly while the residual heat will finish it off. Pour it into 4 ramekins. Be careful, it's burning hot.

Mix the sugar, milk and vanilla. Slowly heat it to a light simmer. Remove from heat.

Beat the eggs together.

Pour just a little of the warm milk into the eggs while stirring constantly. This will adjust the eggs to the warmth slowly so they don't coagulate and make scrambled eggs. Once you've added about a third of the milk, pour the eggs into the rest of the milk.Yes, back again while stirring.

Sift the custard in case some egg has coagulated.

pur the custard on top of the carame sauce. Don't worry if the caramel seem too hard at this stage.

Place the ramekins in bain-marie, that is boiling water up to just below the top of the custard (not the ramekin). Put them in a pre-heated 175º oven for 25 minutes.

Check the flans are done by inserting a knife between th centre and the edge. It should come out clean. Cut around the edges to losen the flan. Place a plate on top.

Turn it round and the flan should come out. Otherwise tap the whole thing lightly against table. There it is, flan...

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