Leche Flan or Caramel Custard - Quick and Easy Recipe

 Leche Flan!!! Who does not love this sweet caramel custard we have all come to love through childhood.

Hello Everyone!

I know that I promised the kimchi recipe next but I haven't really had the time to make a batch for me to take pictures from. So as a compromise, let me present you with this quick and easy recipe I have adapted for the ever sweet and delicious Leche flan! For those unfamiliar with the term, this is caramel custard, a cousin of creme brulee.

Well anyway, it had been raining a lot recently and I have been scouring youtube again for old anime videos just to unwind my tightly wound head. While delving deeply into Japanimation, I happen to come across a cooking channel that I've visited once before for her okonomiyaki recipe. I was poking around her channel when I found her custard recipe which happily enough is a close relative of the Leche Flan we Filipinos simply adore. (You can find her video here) This reminded me about this eggy, creamy dessert that my brother had been egging me to make for quite a while now.

And again, with the definitions (you will really have to get used to me explaining almost everything ^_^)

According to Wikipedia:

 Crème caramel (French: [kʁɛm kaʁaˈmɛl]), flan [flɑ̃], or caramel custard is a custard dessert with a layer of soft caramel on top, as opposed to crème brûlée, which is custard with a hard caramel top. The dish is eaten throughout the world.

In the Philippines, flan is known as leche flan (the local term for the originally Spanish flan de leche, literally "milk flan"), which is a heavier version of the Spanish flan made with condensed milk and more egg yolks. Leche flan is usually steamed over an open flame or stove top, although rarely it can also be seen baked. Leche flan is a staple in celebratory feasts.

A heavier version of leche flan, tocino del cielo, is similar, but has significantly more egg yolks and sugar.

To provide a visual:

A freshly chilled Leche Flan

 That was the actual finished product.

Now this recipe can be done with just 5 ingredients easily found in your pantry. There are a couple of optional ingredients. Adding or not adding the optional ingredients makes very little difference to the finished product. The two optional things are just for aroma more of. :)

So without further ado:

Quick and Easy Leche Flan

Ingredients:

4 tbsp Sugar

2 tbsp water

1/4 cup condensed milk

1 cup fresh/evaporated milk

2 eggs

1 dash vanilla extract*

1 tsp lemon or calamansi juice*

*optional

Method:

Caramel Sauce

 1. Put the 4 tbsp of sugar and 2 tbsp of water in a saucepan. I used muscovado sugar but any type of sugar will do.

2. Heat the sugar solution over medium heat. Bring to a boil.

3. When the sugar reaches the stretchy taffy-like consistency (you can test this by dipping the spoon you are using in cold water)turn it off, add 1 tbsp of water and pour onto containers.

4. Let it sit and make the custard.

Custard/Flan

1. Crack the eggs in a bowl.

2. Beat them lightly. If you have a wire whisk, try to whisk without lifting the tip of the whisk from the bottom of the bowl, since I am still lacking kitchen tools, I made use of a fork. Just try not to make so much foam on top like I did... *sigh*

3. Set the eggs aside, (hopefully the foam eases down a little) and prepare the milk solution. Mix 1 cup of milk, you can use either fresh milk, full cream milk, evaporated milk, sterilized milk. Here I used fresh milk, but I have a feeling that evaporated or full cream would have made it even creamier. And 1/4 cup of condensed milk, or 4 tbsp of sugar)

(1 cup of milk, fresh or evaporated, 1/4 cup of condensed milk, or 4 tbsp of sugar)

4. Pour the milk solution into a saucepan and bring to a "near boil" the emphasis on near boil means... DO NOT BRING TO A BOIL. Just heat the milk enough to mix the solution completely. This is especially important if you are using sugar instead. Just remember, near boil only.

5. Once the milk and sugar/milk and condensed milk are fully mixed, remove from heat, swirl a little to cool it off and pour in with the eggs.

6. Mix the milk and eggs solution thoroughly. As much as possible, try to mix it well so that you don't lose much of the solution once you strain it through a wire sieve.

7. Strain the solution into an easy to pour container.

8. Pour into the cups/molds you lined with the caramel sauce from earlier.

9. Put a kitchen towel on a pan/steamer and position the molds on the surface. Cover the molds with aluminum foil to help with the cooking process. In my case though, I used the lids of the cups. The kitchen towel is to dissipate the heat from the pan. Too much heat can cause the custard to bubble and thus ruining the silky texture of the dessert. And in my case, it would melt the cups ^_^

10. Cover the pan. Steam for 10-12 minutes with near boil water. Again, NEAR BOIL. Try to set the stove to the very minimum you can get. One technique I learned from my aunt was to crank the switch on the stove towards the off position, tapping it to get it to go lower.

11. After 20 minutes, the custard should be ready. Remove from heat, cool down a little then refrigerate.

12. Serve Chilled. Enjoy!!!

And there you have it, folks! Quick and easy Leche flan in under an hour.

The Kimchi Girl

Hi! My name is Shine. I am otherwise known as the Kimchi Girl in the office I work in. I sell kimchi to  officemates and some acquaintances for extra cash.

A little more about me.

I am a girl born and raised in a peaceful little village located on the outer borders of Metro Manila. My family was lucky enough to get a property in such a quiet and kind of secluded village where I could enjoy the conveniences of being in the city and the quiet and solace of the rural areas.

As far back as I can remember, I have had this love f or cooking. I started cooking when I was I think 9 or 10 years old. The first dish I ever learned cooking is steamed rice and fried egg. I then evolved to pasta, casseroles, dumplings and the occasional baked goods.

Now, where on earth does kimchi fall in to place?

I think at this point, you probably have deduced that I am not Korean. Nope, I'm far from that. I am proudly a tanned, petite and full-blooded Filipina.  Lookie my picture



So, yes, I am Filipina.

Kimchi is a traditional Korean dish made of veggies and spices. It's traditionally aged in vats or jars and buried underground during winter. Not that you can't make Kimchi during any other season. To simplify, Kimchi is basically a type of pickle eaten as a side dish to every meal of the day. They eat it in a variety of ways: ala carte, in stews, fried rice, pizza and who knows what else.

 Just a quick background on pickles:

    "Pickling", also known as "brining"or "corning", is the process of preserving food by anaerobic fermentation in brine to produce lactic acid, or marinatingand storing it in an acid solution, usually vinegar (acetic acid). The resulting food is called a pickle. This procedure gives the food a salty or sour taste.In South Asia, edible oils are used as the pickling medium with vinegar.[1]

Now eating pickles as a side dish is not limited to Koreans. The Japanese have their tsukemono, Filipinos have achara, the Chinese have a lot of pickle types to even mention, even the western world has its own brand of pickles.

But this story is about Kimchi.

So there I was, getting over a few rough roads in my life and took to watching Korean soap operas. The one I was watching in particular was Coffee Prince about a poor girl who resorted to dressing like a man  to get a job in a coffee shop. It's a romantic comedy and really helps soothe a few tangled nerves. Now off the central story line, a lot of Korean dishes were featured all throughout the series. One of which was the Kimchi fried rice. Prior to this, I had already been acquainted to Kimchi several years back by my dad. But I never really thought of putting it in fried rice.

I suddenly had this really bad hankering for Kimchi fried rice, but Kimchi is so expensive off the rack. With nothing else to do, and a need to take my mind of things, I went into research on how Kimchi is made. I came across this nice Korean lady online who demos Korean dishes. You can find her site here.

Substituting a few ingredients to things readily available in the market, I ventured into making my very first batch of kimchi which I shared with an officemate. He then told me that he used to order kimchi from a different town regularly. So I said that whenever I make a batch, I'll sell him some. And the rest is history.

That's the history behind how I became the local Kimchi Girl.

I'll be posting my recipes and other gastronomical (<<is this even the right term???) adventures. Let this blog be the testament to my rekindled romance with cooking and the kitchen.

Fresh Kimchi for fermentation (after about 4 hours of working on it >_<)

My next post will be my version of the Kimchi recipe. Let me just complete the step by step photos. ^__^