Florida · Dessert
Floridian Flan
- Intermediate
- 2 h
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with a sweet edge rounding the corners, acid holding everything up to the light, on a rich, rounded finish.
Ingredients
- 200g sugar for the caramel
- 4 eggs
- 2 egg yolks
- 400g sweetened condensed milk
- 375ml evaporated milk
- 1 tsp vanilla
- Zest of 1 lime
- Pinch of salt
Equipment
Grater / zester
The skills inside
Sugar stages & caramelDry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nutsStraining & passing through a sieveThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Melt the sugar in a dry pan to a deep amber caramel and pour it into a round mold, swirling to coat the base.
- Whisk the eggs, yolks, condensed milk, evaporated milk, vanilla, lime zest, and salt until smooth; do not froth it.
- Strain into the caramel-lined mold.
- Set the mold in a roasting pan, pour hot water halfway up the sides, and bake at 160C for 55-65 min until just set with a slight wobble. 65 min
- Cool, then chill overnight. Run a knife around the edge and invert onto a plate so the caramel floods over.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Sugar stages & caramel 53 recipes
- Nothing is stirred once it is boiling, and any crystals clinging to the side of the pan are brushed down rather than left to fall in.
- Judged by temperature or by a tested stage rather than by time: consecutive stages are a few degrees apart and look identical in the pan.
- Colour is read off the heat and in good light, remembering that sugar keeps darkening after the flame is out.
- Stopped decisively at the point wanted: off the heat and into the next liquid or onto a cold surface, rather than left to coast in a hot pan.
- The result is clear and smooth rather than grainy, cloudy, or seized into a solid mass.
Where it goes wrong It was stirred after coming to the boil, or a stray crystal from the side of the pan fell back in. One crystal seeds the whole pan and the syrup turns grainy within seconds, and once sugar has crystallised the only cure is more water and starting the whole thing again.
Dry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nuts 70 recipes
- A single layer on dry metal with nothing added: no fat, and nothing else sharing the pan or the tray and competing for the heat.
- It is kept moving: shaken, stirred, or turned. Anything left still scorches on the face touching the metal while the rest of it is barely warm.
- It is judged by smell before sight: once it is fragrant there are seconds left, not minutes, and the nose reaches that point well before the colour does.
- It leaves the pan the instant it is done, onto a cold surface. A hot pan keeps toasting whatever stays in it, and carryover here is the difference between done and ruined.
- The colour is even and light rather than patchy, with nothing black at the edges: one scorched piece taints the whole quantity it is ground into.
Where it goes wrong It was left alone for a moment while something else was attended to. Dry heat has no margin: the pieces against the metal go from fragrant to acrid inside a minute, and the bitterness cannot be picked back out of a ground mixture.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Moscato d’Asti
- Also Right
- Late-harvest Riesling
- From the Taps
- Witbier
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling elderflower
Citrus desserts need a wine sweeter than they are, with acid enough to keep up: light, frothy, and low-proof wins.
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