The Perfect Flan

Don’t worry, I put the recipe below with another picture, but first I’ll tell you the story.

So we eat sometimes at this authentic mexican restaurant that one of the church members here owns: La Cabaña. Anyway, they have the greatest flan in the world. You see, flan is typically very custardy, but this flan is creamy and sweet in addition to being a great flan. So I wanted to figure out how to do it.

Anyway, the first flan I made came out of a box. We had it after dinner about two or three weeks ago. It was okay, but the flavor was pretty much the same as gelled milk. Not bad, but nothing special.

Then I decided to look on the internet for a real recipe. I found a recipe for Spanish Flan and I figured I would try it. It was good, but it was a traditional flan–very custardy. We both liked it, but it wasn’t the flan I was looking for. That was flan number two.

For flan number three I googled for creamy flan. I found a recipe for cheesecake flan. That caught me off guard cause I’ve never heard of putting cream cheese in flan. The recipe also specifically said to make sure all ingredients are at room temperature before mixing. I didn’t pay attention to that particular instruction because, I thought, “cream cheese is already soft. It’ll mix well.”

It doesn’t

So I had all these cream cheese chunks in the mixture, so I figured if I put it in a sauce pan and heated it up slowly I could still make a flan but melt the cream cheese. Hmm…

That didn’t work as well as I thought it would. It turned into this pudding right before my eyes. I put it in the flan dishes anyway and made a flan of it. It had something like the right taste, but the texture was off. Even though this didn’t taste so much like flan, this was Tonya’s favorite. The missionaries said it wasn’t bad either.

Enter flan number 4. I decided to do the cheesecake flan recipe again, but this time I decided to melt the cream cheese beforehand so I wouldn’t have cream cheese chunks in the mixture. By the way, this is the perfect flan. When it came out of the oven and sat in the fridge overnight, it was creamy, flanny, and delicious in the morning. It’s very close, if not exactly like, the flan at La Cabana.

Every guy has the few things he knows how to cook. You know, meat, chocolate chip cookies, stuff like that. Now I can add flan to my list.

The Flan

The Ingredients

1 packet of cream cheese

1 can of sweetened condensed milk

1 can of evaporated milk

Around 6 eggs. I read you can do a ton more, so you can put in like 8 or 10 eggs to make a bigger flan. It should turn out essentially the same, maybe a bit more eggy.

1 cup of white sugar

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

The Instructions

Go ahead and preheat your oven to 325-350. Put the dish you’ll be using to cook the flan in the oven–I’ll explain why later.

Put the cup of sugar in a saucepan to melt it and make the caramel.

Meanwhile, combine your eggs, sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, and vanilla extract. Put in the cream cheese, but remember to melt it first. I microwaved mine because I’m impatient. You could probably just let it get to room temperature or melt it in a saucepan.

Check your melting sugar. Stir often so it doesn’t burn.

Mix your egg mixture again, make sure the mix is even.

Once your sugar is melted and caramelly, take your flan dish out of the oven. Now when you pour the caramel mixture in the dish it won’t cool immediately because your dish is warm, giving you time to spread the caramel on the bottom.

Put your flan dish into a bigger dish, and pour water around it. Apparently–and I read these tips online–cooking the flan in a water bath helps it cook evenly.

Pour the egg mixture into your flan dish. Cover with aluminum foil and bake at 325-350 for an hour. You can stick a knife in around the middle. If it comes out mostly clean your flan is cooked. Stick it in the fridge. When it has cooled, flip it over and the sugar will pour over everything.

*Update: You have to cook it at 325 and more like 60 to 75 minutes.

Eat

🙂