The Perfect Flan

The air was warm (always the give away of a tropical vacation) and the night was getting older.  We had just finished a wonderful meal at a restaurant hut six doors down when we sauntered slowly in the restaurant and plopped down into two chairs by the front entrance. Flan is such a common Puerto Rican dessert that it can be found on any menu, so I'm not sure what our exact criteria was, but eventually we settled in at a little place with tile floors and no walls.  We sat in our chairs, waited for our coffee (which showed up after our flan) and dug into a curious looking version of a dessert we knew.  It was flan, but with air bubbles and many of them.  Flan with air bubbles? The texture of the flan was something more akin to quiche than the soft smooth custard that we knew. But this, we were assured, was how the Puerto Rican's loved their flan.  Later on in our trip we tried a smooth, soft flan, which we loved, and on our last night we got a cheese flan, which is also very popular in Puerto Rico, but we really didn't like that one.  It was more like a thick cream cheese custard.

Firstly, you need to know flan and creme caramel are the same thing. You probably don't believe me, no one has yet.  That's alright, but go and check, so you know.  Secondly I believe the Puerto Rican's might use evaporated milk in the making of their flans, which is neither bad nor good, just different.  Puerto Ricans also incorporate a lot of air into their flans, on purpose.  So where my recipe says to mix the eggs into the cream until it is just together, they would whip the snot out of it.  You can do either.  'll try not to judge.  I think this recipe holds true to it's name, it's the perfect flan.

Baking notes:
-I made exactly 2/3s of this recipe, since I only had 4 ramekin cups, not the 6 called for.  Which made this recipe a huge pain in the butt to measure out.  But it was still very simple to throw together.  Like seriously easy.
-Three steps: steep milk, make caramel, bake custard.  It's hard to screw up.
-I thought I might have overcooked these at 38 minutes, but after they chilled they came out perfectly.

The recipe for The Perfect Flan can be found on the epicurious website.

72/569