I have known what flan is for a long time because my mom once bought a Jello brand boxed flan mix by mistake when I was a kid. She never made it and for many years I saw it every time I looked through the pantry. Then in middle school I started learning Spanish, and I think some of our class materials, especially in high school, mentioned it and the teacher explained what it was. I thought it sounded pretty good. However, no one ever made it for class parties that involved cooking food, probably because you have to keep it cold and high school kids don't usually have access to a refrigerator at school.
My first taste of something like it was in Japan, oddly enough. Caramel custard pudding with liquid caramel sauce (purin) is a pretty common dessert option there. You can even buy it at convenience stores, which sounds sketchy, but the food at Japanese convenience stores is often reasonably good depending on what you get. I clearly remember the first time my host mother brought some home for us from a bakery because it tasted incredible. I enjoyed it a few other times I was there but didn't really seek it out once I came home.
Deviations from the above recipe:
- I used 2% milk instead of whole milk because it was what I had, and it was fine. As long as you're using milk with a decent amount of fat it should work properly.
- Instead of putting it in ramekins, I put it all into one 8x8 glass pan and baked it for 60 minutes but that was a little too much. It probably only needed 50-55 minutes.
Verdict: As I said above, this was absolutely delicious. The caramel sauce is incredible. It's wild how delicious caramelized sugar is for how very simple it is. Fair warning, if you make it in a glass pan it might look like the glass is cracked after you bake the caramel in it but it's the caramel, not the glass. It is dangerous to keep around :) I ate it too fast. I would definitely make it again.
