A Foolproof Spanish Flan Guaranteed to Dazzle

This recipe is part of the series The Recipe I Mastered This Year

I've always struggled with making good desserts. My biryani is famous and my fish curry is to die for, but I never had the discipline to use perfectly measured ingredients and work with precise temperatures and timings, as baking requires. This year, I pushed myself to move away from cooking which allows for some degree of freewheeling, and practiced this flan recipe until I mastered it!

This recipe is from my dear friend Derly, a Columbian-American married to a Brazilian. After practicing many variations on her recipe, I've finally settled on the following ingredients. I won't claim it's authentic recipe, but it is certainly foolproof; simple enough to whip up in a few hours, and gorgeous enough to dazzle your friends and family!

Piryanka’s Recipe for Spanish Flan

Ingredients
1/2 cup granulated sugar
6 medium-size eggs
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
500 ml of whole milk
1 tbsp of vanilla extract

Method

The caramelized top
Heat the granulated sugar in a saucepan on low to medium heat. Keep stirring until it turns into golden/brown sugar syrup.
No need to add water or any other liquid. Just be patient and never take your eyes off the pan.
Pour this sugar syrup into your flan pan or any baking tray. Make sure the entire bottom of the pan is covered.
Set aside

Custard mixture
Preheat the oven at 180 C
Blend eggs, condensed milk, whole milk and vanilla extract in a large blender
Make sure that the blended mixture is smooth and frothy
Pour the mixture over the pan that already has caramelized sugar at the bottom. The caramelized sugar should have solidified by now.
Dab the pan a few times to take all the air bubbles out.

Baking the flan
Cover the top of the pan with aluminium foil
Fill a larger baking tray with water and place the flan pan right in the centre
Ensure that there is enough water to surround the flan pan, right to the level of the custard mixture in the pan (to ensure thorough cooking)
Let it cook on 350F for 45-50 minutes

Serving the flan
Remove the flan carefully from the water bath, allow cool for 5-10 minutes on the countertop.
Remove aluminium foil
Now place a serving dish on top of the flan pan
Use your swift ninja moves and flip the flan onto the serving dish.
The caramelized sugar syrup will now be a translucent golden top of your flan. Voila, flan is ready!
Leave to chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours before serving.

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