Danielle's Flandango

I LOVE flan. I was excited when Cami picked this episode. I've made and had flan a number of times before and this was as good as any I've had. The texture was perfect. And besides the caramel, it was super easy to make. The only deviation I made from the recipe was that instead of half & half, I used half whole milk and half heavy cream. Half & half is just milk and cream anyway right? I figured I didn't need to buy cream AND half & half.

I did all of mine with caramel. I'm interested in how it would turn out with chocolate in the bottom, but I didn't want to make chocolate sauce in addition to caramel. For the caramel, I used the brown sugar caramel sauce recipe in the Baked book. I messed up the consistency (I still haven't perfected my caramel making methods), but it worked out just fine for the flan. And it tasted great. This recipe is a keeper.

Man with a Flan

The recipes this week are from The Egg-Files II: Man with a Flan on page 150. Jason picked this episode because of the flan. He is a huge fan of creme brulee and I think he was secretly hoping flan is the same thing. It turns out it is pretty close. It has a slightly more eggy flavor than creme brulee but otherwise it's pretty close.

I used 6 ounce ramekins instead of 4 ounce so I ended up with 6 flans instead of 8. I used caramel, homemade sugar-free blueberry jam and a mix of caramel and mini-chocolate chips. The pure caramel topped flan tasted exactly like french toast. It was really good. The blueberry was good as well but the caramel with chocolate chip was by far my favorite. The chocolate chips didn't melt much so it adds a little texture.

I'm going to be making the refrigerator pie tomorrow, so I'll post about that later in the week.