Flan (Caramel Custard Pudding)

Epicurious calls this The Perfect Flan recipe, and while I'm pretty skeptical of people and websites that use superlatives in their recipe titles, I tried it anyway because the reviews were good. While I can't prove it's -the perfect- recipe for flan, it is certainly very, very good and I don't feel the need to try another one because I liked this one so much.

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.

What inspired me to try making flan is a recent potluck party. I work with a lot of people that are not originally from the US, and one of the graduate students I work with had the idea to have a potluck party where everyone contributes food from their respective country. One of my coworkers has relatives from Puerto Rico and she brought two things that often show up at her winter family gatherings: coquito (a coconut based eggnog-like drink, super yummy) and a large pan of homemade flan to the party. After trying hers and falling in love immediately, I needed more of it in my life.

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.

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RECIPE: The Perfect Flan

Scandiwegian Spring Cake

My husband and I have hosted a birthday party for one of our friends at our house for several years now, and I always make him a cake. Last year I made him a carrot cake, and this year he wanted something different and let me choose. This year, I decided to make him a vanilla and cardamom cake with rhubarb filling and cream cheese frosting.

The name comes from a Stephen Fry documentary where he visits all 50 states in the United States. For the episode featuring Minnesota, he explains that winters are quite cold and snowy there, and calls the many enclosed walkways between buildings "a bit of Scandiwegian ingenuity" (during the mass migration of Europeans to the United States in the 1800s, many Norwegians and other Scandinavian immigrants settled in the area that is now Minnesota). I thought this name was really cute and used it to describe this cake because it has a number of flavors common in Scandinavian baked goods.

Notes:

• Since the 6 inch cake layers were really thick, I split them to make the cake 4 layers. I filled each gap with rhubarb filling because I had a lot. I think I ended up with not quite enough frosting.
• You will likely have extra rhubarb filling. It tastes nice on yogurt or ice cream.
• I think it would taste better with a lighter textured cake (this ended up dense and a little tough and this was possibly my fault for cramming all of this into two 6 inch pans), a thicker rhubarb filling (adding a little more pectin would probably fix that issue), and a lighter frosting because it set up quite hard when refrigerated.
• This is the petal tip I used for piping (Wilton #104). The ruffle effect definitely takes some practice to make it look neat (I am not proud of my icing job, for the record) but it turned out OK for a first try.

Verdict: I personally think I could have done better in terms of execution, especially with the piping, but I would definitely try making this again with the aforementioned tweaks because I loved this flavor combination. One of the band members declared it the best cake he has ever had in his life, so it couldn't have been too awful.

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RECIPE:

Scandiwegian Spring Cake
adapted from My Name is Yeh (cake), Will Cook For Friends (filling), unknown (frosting)
Makes 1 6 inch round cake, serves 8

Cardamom vanilla cake
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 3/4 cups sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 tsp ground cardamom
2 large eggs
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup neutral flavored oil, such as canola
1 1/2 tbsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup boiling water

Rhubarb filling
½ cup (100 g) granulated sugar, or more to taste
½ tbsp (about 7 g) powdered fruit pectin
7 oz (about 1¾ cups chopped, 200g) fresh or frozen rhubarb, cut into ½ inch pieces
¼ cup water
1 tsp (5 ml) fresh squeezed lemon juice, plus more to taste
1-2 drops red food coloring (optional, if your rhubarb is not very red and you want the filling to have a pinkish tint)

Cream cheese frosting
4 oz (½ cup, 1 stick) unsalted butter
8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 lb powdered sugar (about ½ bag)
Milk, to thin if needed

Prepare cake: Set oven temperature to 350°F. Grease two 6 inch round springform pans with butter, line the bottoms with parchment paper rounds, and grease the parchment paper. Place all dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cardamom) in a large bowl and whisk gently to combine. Set aside. Place eggs, buttermilk, oil, and vanilla in another slightly smaller bowl and whisk until well combined. Pour the wet ingredients into the bowl with the dry ingredients and whisk them together. Stir in the boiling water. The resulting batter will be very thin. Divide batter evenly between the two prepared pans. Bake for about 30 minutes, or until the tops of the cakes have browned slightly and a bamboo skewer or other tester poked into the center of the cake comes out with no batter or crumbs clinging to it. When done, remove from oven and let stand for about 10 minutes to cool slightly, then remove cakes from pans to a lightly greased cooling rack to cool completely. While cakes bake and cool, prepare filling and frosting.

Prepare filling: Place sugar and pectin in a nonstick or stainless steel or other non-reactive saucepan and whisk to combine. Add remaining ingredients to the pan and heat on the stove to a rolling boil over high heat. Cook until pectin has activated and rhubarb pieces have broken down to where no whole pieces remain, about 7-8 minutes. At this point, you can adjust the taste by adding more sugar and/or more lemon juice. When you are satisfied with the flavor, remove pan from heat. If you want a very smooth filling, use an immersion blender or transfer the mixture to a standard blender and blend until smooth. Let cool to room temperature. You will likely end up with extra filling; it can be stored in a clean jar or other airtight container in the refrigerator for up to 2 weeks. It can also be frozen.

Prepare frosting: Cream butter and cream cheese together in the bowl of a stand mixer or with a hand mixer. Add vanilla and beat until incorporated. Mix in powdered sugar in several additions.

Assemble the cake: Level the two cake layers so they will stack neatly. Prepare a decorating bag fitted with a petal tip and fill with about 3/4 of the cream cheese frosting. Place one of the cake layers on your plate or rotating stand (if you have one). Pipe a thick line of frosting just inside the top edge all the way around. Spoon rhubarb filling inside to fill the circle of frosting. Place the other cake layer on top of this. Spread on a thin layer of frosting to just cover and stick together the entire cake (crumb coat) and transfer to the refrigerator to chill for 5-10 minutes to let it harden. To pipe the ruffles, place the wide end of the petal tip against the side of the cake at the bottom and pipe around the outside of the cake, rotating the plate as you go, working your way up from the bottom. Decorate top as desired.

Raspberry Coconut Macaroons

I was looking for a recipe to use up extra toasted coconut. It had powdered sugar mixed in (I was making a batch of marshmallows with it), so that limited what I could do with it. I came across Smitten Kitchen's raspberry coconut macaroons, and seeing as I had some frozen raspberries that also needed to get eaten and I thought the extra moisture from using frozen berries would be balanced out by the extra dryness from the powdered sugar and toasting the coconut, I gave them a try!

I mostly followed the recipe, but as I am wont to do, I made do with things I already had. I got as much of the powdered sugar out of the coconut I had and drained the frozen raspberries very well (blotting with paper towel) to get them to have a similar consistency to fresh.

Verdict: As a clean-out-the-pantry experiment I loved them, and would consider making them properly on purpose in the future! (I think they turned out drier than they're supposed to.) Definitely worth getting out the food processor. My husband liked them too. Coincidentally they are my mom's favorite flavor and my dad's favorite flavor mashed together so I wonder how they'd go over at home. :)

RECIPE: Raspberry Coconut Macaroons