Flan fares well!

So this weekend was the blessing of the house! In case you are wondering what the heck is this, in our Syrian Orthodox tradition, when you move into a new house, there is a prayer held and the priest blesses the house. The priest marks all the doors of the house with the sign of the cross. I am a fan of ceremonies and I immensely enjoyed it,although it was more of an emotional factor than fun factor.
We had invited some of our friends from our church and since we have no family in the neighboring hoods we skipped them. Anyway since the purpose of this blog is to talk about food let me skip talking about the other fun stuff we had. It was a catered event but I did want to add something homemade to it. And I decided to do dessert as I am not a big fan of Indian desserts and I did not think that the caterers we had did desserts.
And therefore we decided to make flan. Flan is just Mexican for simple milk and egg pudding. It is painlessly simple and can be made ahead and therefore was perfect for us.

This is the recipe

6 egg yolks
2 whole eggs
2 cans evaporated milk
3/4 cup sugar
2 tsp. vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F
Beat the eggs and sugar, add the evaporated milk and the vanilla extract.
Pour into a caramelised mold.
Place the mold into a larger pan with half inch water and place in the bottom rack of the preheated oven.
Bake in oven for 65min and to check if done, insert a sharp knife into the centre of the flan. If just a film of custard clings to the knife, the flan is done. When you jiggle the mold, the custard should shimmer in the middle but look cooked around the edge.
Remove from oven and cool mold on a rack. The flan will continue to cook for about an hour after being removed from the oven. During this time it will set up. Refrigerate at least 2 hours before unmolding, and this is real FUN
Just run the knife around the edges. Place a plate on top of the mold and hold them together and flip over in a quick motion.

Serve with the caramel sauce that is left in the mold.
This is one recipe that has never failed but once, when I used condensed milk instead of the evaporated milk and it just did not hold well.

Other possible and healthier substitutions are:
Use 1 can evaporated milk and 12 oz. regular or low fat milk instead of 2 cans of evaporated milk.
You can also use 4 egg yolks instead of six.


Recipe courtesy Gourmet Sleuth
Click here for more info and recipes on flan.