Best-Laid Flans

Day 130: With apologies to Rabbie, "The best-laid flans...gang aft a-gley." Not this one! After making Snowskin Mooncakes which required roughly one tablespoon of sweetened condensed milk, I was in a bit of a quandary with respect to how to use the remaining 99.5% in the open can. Fudge was an obvious answer, but uninspired, so I began browsing YouTube once again. Now I am an old hand at making flan, so when I saw a recipe from Preppy Kitchen, I almost skipped over it thinking that it would probably mean a trip to the grocery store for cream, but I decided to watch it anyway. About halfway through, I said,"Hang on a mo'...sweetened condensed milk and evaporated milk? No cream? I have everything I need for this!" I put it together late yesterday afternoon, chilled it overnight and did the taste-test for breakfast-dessert. Put up against my usual recipe, you might notice a slightly less creamy flavour, but that's a fair trade-off for being able to keep all the ingredients on hand. I will repeat the recipe here in case you want to try it, but would also suggest that you look up Preppy Kitchen. The presentations are quite entertaining, and his recipes are always accurate.

Place 3/4 cup of sugar in a shallow pan (I used a small frying pan). Add 1/4 cup water and mix briefly. Place over medium-high heat and cook without stirring until sugar is nicely browned (hard-crack stage). Pour the caramel into an 8- or 9-inch pan and set aside to cool until the caramel hardens.

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Adding one at a time, beat six eggs until smooth. Add one 15-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk, one 12-ounce can of evaporated milk and one Tbsp. vanilla. Beat until thoroughly incorporated. Pour into your chosen pan.

To bake, you will need a second pan somewhat larger than the pan for the custard. Place the pan containing the custard in the larger pan, and then add boiling water to the larger pan until it's about halfway up the sides of the custard pan. Put in the oven and bake for 45-60 minutes, or until a knife inserted in the center of the custard (but not into the caramel on the bottom) comes out clean. NB: If your ingredients are refrigerated, baking time may have to be extended even longer. Because my sweetened condensed milk had been in the fridge, I had to bake the custard for an additional half hour. Remove from oven and cool on countertop for 15-20 minutes. Cover with plastic wrap pressed down against the surface and chill for at least 4 hours. To remove from pan, run a knife around the edge of the custard, set the pan in warm water for a couple of minutes and then invert onto a plate. The caramel will have turned into the sticky syrup which makes this Latin dessert such a decadent treat.