The Only Flan Recipe Worth Making 🍮
The Ultimate Flan Experience... at home in your kitchen
So you may be thinking “wow, that’s a bold claim”… yup and I’ll die on this hill.
Let me give you a quick background though.
I’m 6 y/o and sitting in a (now closed 😭) Cuban restaurant in Miami. My head peeking above the table top and staring wide-eyed at a plate of Palomilla Steak buried under a mountain of fresh cut shoe-string fries.
I barely made it through 1/4 of the plate but it didn’t matter. The plate was for me, alone. A sign of maturing to not have to split a plate with a sibling 😆
The meal ended with my parents ordering the obligatory Cuban coffee and some weird looking mass my dad called “flan”. (That’s ‘fl-ahn’ not ‘fl-anne’)
I recall my parents taking a bite or two and literally ooo-ing and ahhh-ing over this ‘fl-ahn’. Of course I asked my dad for a bite , and after reassuring him i was sure I wanted to try it… he plunged his fork into the thick flan to deliver me a bite.
I was lucky in that I was an adventurous eater as a child, and a curious person in general, which has done nothing but help my cooking skill and intuition in the kitchen.
The rest is history. Tasting that flan scorched a food memory that remains today. The chilled custard was insanely creamy (not grainy) yet held a strong density, lilting sweetness (but not too sweet), with a dark, round, caramel finish which cleansed the palate and made you instantly want another bite.
It was heaven
This was my first memory of Cuban food… a cuisine that to this day remains precious, delicious and nostalgic to me.
From that moment I was a flan fanatic and ordered it anytime I was in a Cuban restaurant (or shared with siblings). But no flan… and I mean, no flan… came close to the particular restaurant where my first flan memory was made. The others were too light and not dense enough. Or the caramel was taken off too soon and you didn’t get that deep, dark, caramel finish; or the vanilla was non existent, etc.
Flash forward many years later and my parents became good friends with a Cuban couple, Danny & Giselle. This lady ended up teaching Mama Octopod so many techniques and recipes for authentic, homestyle Cuban (as well as Puerto Rican) food.
And that’s where this recipe comes from.
This is the only flan, to this day, that is on par or literally beats the perfect flan we used to order at the now defunct Cuban restaurant of my childhood.
I made this for Easter this past weekend and the consensus remains.
Before we go further just a quick caveat on “what is proper flan?”
Well, flan is not creme caramel 🇫🇷, nor creme Catalena 🇪🇸 , nor creme brûlée, nor quesillo, etc.
While all above the above are baked custards… flan should have a distinct density. More than those above. It requires a slight push to get your fork through. Not jelly-like at all. Firm which makes the insane creaminess linger on your palate.
The caramel needs to be taken dark… just before it might scorch and then swiftly poured into your mold. This creates the perfectly dark caramel that counters the punchy vanilla-cream sweetness.
I think you get the idea now and if you aren’t drooling or craving a piece of flan yet, we have issues 😂
I’ll be honest when I started this Substack, my family flan recipe was one of those “I don’t know if I’m gonna share this” since I’ve never shared it with anyone before. I’ll make it for friends, they love it. But it’s a family treasure that I’ve enjoyed.
I’m sharing this with you now in the hopes it will become as much of a treasure to you and yours, as it has become in my family.
From from Giselle… to Mama Octopod… to me… and now to you: Please enjoy 🙏
