Cooking for Gringas: Flan

Alternate blog post titles included "I've always been your biggest flan" and "you should have put him in custardy."  If you know where these references are from, you are my new hero. Anyway, here's another recycled reinvented post in my newest series:

Today, we're going to talk about flan. There are only six ingredients in most recipes, yet flan can be fairly difficult to make. In fact, I'd been a bit intimidated by the flan for quite some time. Fortunately, I have a friend who, too, is a gringa who married into the Cuban culture. We figured with our gringa powers combined (and with the help of her mother-in-law), we could tackle the most daunting dessert in all the land.

Flan (Recipe credit goes to my fellow gringa friend Jenn. She does not have a blog to link to, but she encourages you to read mine.)

Ingredients:

Flan:
1 can condensed milk
1 can evaporated milk
4 eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Caramel:
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup water

Directions:

Combine flan ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth.

Set this mixture aside. Next, combine sugar and water in a medium pan over medium-high heat. Do not over-stir. Just make sure the entire mixture is the same color (no dry sugar allowed).

This next part is hard. Just watch that pan and let it sit there. You will feel tempted to mess with it, but leave it alone. Trust me. While you're waiting, get a water bath going, as you would for cheesecake.

Both Jenn's and my in-laws told us to "wait until you can smell it" or "until it turns golden brown." Well, I don't know what that means. A few minutes later, we did start to smell it, but it still wasn't the right color. We started to panic, unsure as to whether this meant it was done. As we debated what to do next, the mixture magically changed color to golden brown...almost instantaneously. This is what it should look like:

Sure enough, our boys could smell it too. Don't they look like meerkats?

Waiting for the mixture to "smell right" and "turn the perfect color" is really the only tricky part. It's a lot like making caramel, but to me it always seemed more daunting than that. Experiment, and don't be afraid to try again if you mess up!

Next, pour your new caramel into an ungreased loaf pan (or a round cake pan), but be careful - this stuff is hot! Tip the pan back and forth so that the caramel covers the entire bottom and as much of the sides as possible. Move quickly, because the caramel cools faster than you think it will.

Next, pour your flan batter over the caramel. Place in a roasting pan and pour the water bath around it. Place in the oven and bake at 400˚ for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

When it's done baking, it should look like this:

Let it cool overnight in the fridge. Flip onto a serving platter and serve cold.

Do any of you have experience making custards? Any tips or tricks you'd like to share?