Hi everyone! Today’s recipe is a famous French pastry called the flan. It’s made up of a crunchy pie crust filled with a smooth vanilla custard cream baked in the oven. The flan is super light and smooth with a delicious vanilla flavor. It’s a very easy recipe to make.
For a 18cm diameter and 6cm high flan:
Pie crust:
- 100g of butter
- 100g of icing sugar
- 200g of flour
- 1 pinch of baking powder
- 40g of egg (one small egg)
The cream:
- 3 eggs
- 150g of sugar (or honey)
- 60g of corn starch
- 150g of full liquid cream
- 600mL of whole milk
- 2 tbsp of vanilla extract
- one vanilla bean (or a bit of vanilla powder)
Let’s begin with the pie crust:
1. In a bowl, mix the softened butter with the icing sugar, the flour and the baking powder until it has a sandy texture.
2. Add the egg and mix to form a ball.
3. Film the dough with cling film and refrigerate minimum 30min.
4. Divide the dough in half and roll out the first half to a 3mm thickness and cut a 18cm diameter circle. Place it at the bottom of a greased mold over a baking tray covered with parchment paper or aluminum paper.
5. Roll out the other half of the dough to a 3mm thickness too and cut stripes of 6cm wide. If the dough is hard to manipulate, place it a few minutes in the freezer. Place the stripes inside the mold and make sure they are welded to the bottom.
6. Refrigerate the mold while we make the custard cream.
For the custard cream:
1. Place the milk with the vanilla bean, the vanilla extract and half of the sugar (or honey) (75g) in a saucepan and bring to boiling point. Let everything infuse minimum 20min (I prefer to let it infuse one night for more flavor).
2. In a bowl, whisk the eggs with the other half of sugar (or honey) (75g) until it slightly whitens. Add the corn starch and the liquid cream.
3. After the milk’s infused, bring it to simmering point and remove the vanilla bean.
4. Pour the milk in three times over the egg mixture and mix. Bring back everything in the saucepan and cook over medium heat until it thickens.
5. When the cream has thickened, pour it in the mold, smooth the surface and wait until it completely cools down (it takes about 1h).
6. When the cream is completely cold, cook the flan in a 220°C preheated oven for 20min and then increase the temperature to 240°C for 10 more minutes. At the end of the cooking time, if the top of the flan isn’t brown enough, switch the oven to grill mode for a few minutes, be careful it takes only a few seconds (personally I didn’t need the grill mode).
7. Let the flan cool down completely before unmolding it, otherwise it’ll collapse because of the weight of the cream. Refrigerate it minimum 4h before serving it.
Your flan is ready! Enjoy!
Don’t forget to write an email to partage@justonemorecake.com to share your pictures of the recipe and your opinions! I will add them at the bottom of this article.
