FLAN (Spanish recipe)

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups of milk
• One branch of cinnamon
• 1 scrape lemon peel (or branch of vanilla)
• 5-6 egg yolks (4 yolks is risky, 5 is ok while 6 is very conservative and you should not fail to coagulate the custard)
• 7 ounces of sugar

1. Making the caramel

First we are going to make the caramel. From the 7 ounces of sugar take around 2 ounces. Place the sugar in a pan and set it in medium fire with few drops of lemon juice. The lemon juice prevents caramel to cristalize. When the sugar gets liquid with the color of honey quickly pour it at the botton of individual molds or in a large mold if you plan to make a large single flan. The caramel will solidifize, never mind. Later on the caramel will get liquid again. If you do not like the caramel simply skip this step.

2. Making the custard

Boil the milk with the branch of cinnamon and the peel of the lemon. The peel should not have the white part because is bitter. If you do not like lemon flavour use vanilla branch.
Meanwhile beat the egg yolks with the rest of sugar (5 ounces) using a whisk. Remove the cinnamon branch and the lemon from the boiled milk. Pour the milk slowly to the mix of yolks and sugar, stirring all the time. Do not do pour the beaten yolks to the boiled milk : most probably the flan will not get solid. Always pour yolks to the milk, not otherwise. That's specially true if you use few yolks. Now distribute the custard in each of the individual molds (or in the large one).

3. The oven

Preheat the oven at 350 F. Get a baking dish and fill it with water. Be sure that when you place the molds inside the baking dish the water will not reach the custard. Now put the baking dish into the oven with the molds. More or less in 1 hour the flan will be ready. In order to be sure the flan is made just stick a toothpick and if it comes out dry then is made. Allow to cool at room temperature and put in the refrigerator. The time inside the oven can change between 1 hour and 1 hour and 15 minutes, up to your oven. Larger periods of time would mean custard will not get solidified and something was wrong during preparation.