Last night I attempted to make this South American dessert called Flan. It's essentially the same thing as a Crème Caramel, but I had never made either before.
This was an adventure for me becuase I was going to make my own caramel from.....SUGAR!!
The recipe looked easy enough...only 4 ingredients: sugar, milk, eggs, vanilla
Flan
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
6 egg yolks
2 tsp vanilla
3/4 sugar
2 cans evaporated milk
So the first step was to carmelize a cup of sugar over medium high heat on the stove. It said not to stir or I'd get clumpy caramel, so I left it. Nothing seemed to happen, so I got bored of staring at the pot and went to the computer to re-read the recipe.
I swear I was only gone for a second and when I came back i saw smoke rising from the pot, and the sugar had turned into a dark brown bubbling caramel. Only it didn't smell like caramel. It smelled like burning.
I immediately took it off the heat and poured the caramel into a jar. About half of the caramel went into the jar, and the other half had hardened into a candy coating inside my pot!
No amount of scrubbing and chipping could remove the hard candy.
Nearing anger and frusturation, I was going to throw away my pot and vow never to try to make flan again when I remembered that I know a professional pastry chef!
I called Sarah, and she calmly explained that I should boil some water in the candy coated pot and let the sugar dissolve into the water. It worked like magic! She also taught me how to properly and easily prepare the rest of my flan.
She was so calm and reassuring that I bravely follow the rest of her tips and in the end, my flan turned out beautifully! Looked like something that could be served in a restaurant.
I'm going to make flan for my Mexican pot luck at work, but this time I'll be a caramel expert!
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