Flan Fellowship

Make new friends, and keep the old. One is silver and the other has gold.

Gold, in this story, is a luscious batch of flan.

Our dear friend Sara is a talented mixologist who's always in demand for the party spirits. Recently she showed us even stronger magic. During our family funeral reception, she brought her grandmother's Cuban flan. Sweet, creamy, cut into perfect single servings, it was a master stroke and a crowd favorite. There was nothing for it but to ask her to do a cooking class at Singing Wheat Kitchen.

She not only brought the flan ingredients, she brought the Top Shelf margaritas, too - what a grand girl! We popped a few folding chairs just behind the stove and watched her whisk the brilliance.

Remember the lesson of Sara's gift: As you gather with friends and share something marvelous, write down where you are and who you're with. Food connects us with our memories. A recipe without a story lacks the spirit of the thing, the motivation, the intention, the essence of how you felt when you first discovered it.

Sara loves this flan because her grandmother handed it down to her. She remembers her grandmother's cooking talent extended only to desserts. "She was a beautiful, wonderful woman who doted on us and shared with us the joys of the simple, sweet bites of life," Sara says. 

That's what you have to capture and preserve, the stories in addition to the ingredients. This idea is the cornerstone of author Kathleen Flinn's next book, a multi-generational memoir with recipes. She wrote "The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry" about attending Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and it made me feel better about my experience with the Dallas branch. She told what it was like to withstand the world's most famous cooking school and ended every chapter with a recipe. 

Recipes tell a story, and if they don't, they're not as powerful as they could be. Just ask the mixologist.

By good fortune, here is her marvelous flan.

Cuban Flan Recipe by Sara S. Hewitt

With this recipe, if you are going to make one, you might as well make two, so here goes:

                                             For One Flan               For Two Flans

Caramel Sauce:

Sugar                                          3/4 cups             1 ½ cups

Water                                          1/4 cup               1/2 cup

Flan Ingredients:

Evaporated milk                          1 cup                          2 cups

Sweetened Condensed Milk       1 14 oz. can                2 14 oz. cans

Well-beaten eggs                        5-6 large eggs           10-12 large eggs (Sara likes 10)

Vanilla Extract                     1 teaspoon                 2 teaspoons

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.  Place in the oven a 9x13 metal pan filled 1/3 full of water.

In a saucepan, heat the sugar and water over medium high heat until it becomes syrupy and a golden color (about 15 minutes). If you want a darker brown, let it heat longer. Have one or two bread loaf pans ready. Watch carefully and do not overheat because it will burn to black in a hurry. At high altitudes, really watch it! When the caramel sauce is where you want it, pour it into the loaf pan and run the hot caramel slightly up the edges to coat the four sides of the pan. The caramel sauce will be very hot so take care not to spill on your hands. Let the pan sit to cool and the caramel sauce will harden.

While you are waiting for your caramel sauce to get to the syrupy consistency, hand-whisk the remaining ingredients. Efficiency tip: When making two flans, I usually use just 1 12-ounce can of evaporated milk and top it off to 2 cups with whipping cream. More calories, but you don’t have leftover evaporated milk. Pour the mixture into the loaf pan(s) and then place in the preheated, water-filled 9 X 13 pan (water bath) in the oven. The loaf pan(s) should sit in the water. Add more water if too much has burned off.

Bake at 350 degrees for 45-50 minutes until set. DO NOT OVERCOOK! Let cool. Take an offset spatula and run it around the edges to make sure the flan will fall out easily. Cover the top of the loaf pan with the serving dish and quickly invert the loaf pan so that the flan slides out easily. Spoon out the extra caramel sauce onto the flan. Chill for at least 4 hours before serving.

Serves 12-16 depending on how thick you cut the slices. Serve “as is,” or you can garnish with fruit (blueberries, strawberries, or raspberries) and whipped cream.

There will be a hard candy crust on the bottom of your loaf pan(s). Pour hot water in the pan and let sit until the hard crust dissolves.

(To cut for party servings, make one long cut horizontally through the center of the loaf pan flan.  Then make short cuts vertically - the short side.)