Our Best-Ever Flan Is So Good You'll Want To Lick The Plate
This flan recipe is as easy, classic, and creamy as it gets—here's how to make it the best it can, from the custard to the caramel sauce.
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00:00 Hey y'all, it's Brooke and I'm in the Delish Kitchen studios
00:02 whipping up a classic custardy dessert that we all know and love, it's flan.
00:07 It's creamy, caramelly, super silky smooth, and surprisingly simple to pull together,
00:12 even if you've never made caramel before. To make flan, you have to start with a caramel,
00:17 and to make caramel, you have to start with it in a skillet on a stove top.
00:21 This is a wet caramel, which means we're going to use sugar and water. A dry caramel uses just
00:26 sugar. We like using a wet caramel for this because they're way more foolproof and easy to cook.
00:32 The water helps the sugar not overcook and burn. We're going to start with a small skillet and
00:36 we're going to put it over a medium heat. We're going to add a cup of sugar and then a third cup
00:40 of water and let that melt basically and cook for about 10 to 15 minutes. The main thing with
00:46 caramel is don't stir it. The reason we don't want to stir the caramel is because it'll form
00:51 little sugar crystals that won't melt and make a really homogenous smooth caramel. It'll have
00:57 little chunks of sugar in it and we don't want that. I told you not to stir, but one thing you
01:01 can do is get a pastry brush, dip it in a little bit of water, and use that to control any sugar
01:07 that's jumping up on the side of the pan and brush it back down into the mixture. As you can see,
01:12 the caramel is starting to get a little bit darker in color. We're going to let it go for a little
01:16 bit longer until it gets a really nice, rich, deep amber color. We're also going to work really
01:21 quickly to get this caramel out of the skillet and into the pan. And remember, once you get that
01:26 caramel into the cake pan, you want to work really quickly to make sure it spreads across the whole
01:30 bottom of the cake pan and to cover evenly. As you can see, it's gotten to a really deep, rich color.
01:36 Kind of looks like maple syrup. So if you need something else to compare it to, that's your key.
01:40 I don't know if you guys have ever worked with sugar before, but it gets way hotter than boiling
01:45 water. So please be careful on this part when you're pouring the caramel from the skillet into
01:49 the cake pan. And your cake pan will also heat up quite a bit too. So make sure you get that
01:54 swirling part done quickly, set it down, and let it cool. There are two main types of flan,
02:00 and that's Mexican flan and Spanish style flan. Major difference is the kind of egg that you're
02:05 using. In Mexican style flan, you use both whole eggs and egg yolks, whereas in Spanish style flan,
02:10 you just use egg yolks. This recipe leans more toward the traditional Mexican style of flan
02:15 that uses eggs and egg yolks, and it also uses a little bit of vanilla extract. To make the custard
02:21 for this flan into a bowl, we're going to whisk our cream, milk, vanilla extract, and salt. And
02:28 then we're going to mix that together with a whisk until it's nice and well blended. This next part
02:33 of the custard is what makes this a true Mexican style flan. We're using both whole eggs and egg
02:39 yolks. We've got our eggs separated in this bowl. I'm going to go ahead and whisk these together
02:44 with a little bit of sugar, and then we're going to pour that milk and cream mixture in here,
02:48 and our custard will be pretty much done. Okay, so I've got my custard and the caramel all ready
02:54 to go. The best part about doing the caramel first is that it gives it a chance to set up and harden.
02:59 You guys can hear that. It's basically like a caramel candy layer. After we put it in the oven
03:06 with the custard layer, it's going to melt and turn into that caramel syrup that we all know
03:10 and love from flan. I'm going to pour this custard over our hardened caramel layer,
03:15 and then we're going to pour some hot water into the baking dish around the cake pan until it's
03:20 about halfway up the sides. Our water bath is all set up and ready to go. We're going to put this in
03:26 a 350 degree oven for 50 to 55 minutes until the center is still jiggly and just barely set.
03:33 A couple things you can do to make sure your flan comes out cleanly. Start with an offset spatula,
03:39 and you want to just sort of dislodge the custard from the edges of the pan
03:44 by going around the edge and loosening whatever bits might feel like they're stuck to the edge
03:48 of the pan. The last thing we want is to flip this whole flan out and then a bunch of chunks
03:53 of custard are stuck behind the pan. That would make me very sad. That's going to make you very
03:57 sad, so do yourself a favor and help it come out. Then, of course, we know the only way to invert
04:04 something is to take a plate, put it on the pan, and then we're going to do a flip and say a prayer.
04:12 I'm going to do a couple of safety knocks just to make sure all of that custard
04:17 is truly off of the bottom of the pan.
04:19 This is looking absolutely flan-tastic, and I can't wait to take a bite.
04:33 Mmm. Oh, my goodness. It's so silky and smooth and soft, and the best part of flan, honestly,
04:40 is all this extra caramel sauce you get, so I love spooning a couple extra teaspoons on top
04:45 of my slice before digging in. It's the peak custard, right? It's not eggy, but it's really
04:50 smooth, and it's soft, and it's silky, and it's still got a little bit of body to it, which I
04:56 like. That vanilla is really coming through, which is why I'm glad we went with the Mexican-style
05:00 flan. You might expect a caramel dessert like this to be really cloying and too sweet, but
05:05 this really hits the perfect balance because there's not too much sugar in the custard,
05:10 so a lot of the sweetness comes from that caramel that's on top, but you also get some really toasty
05:15 notes, some real richness there from the caramel. It's really nice. Make this for birthdays or for
05:20 holidays when you have a ton of family and friends coming over. It's going to look like you put in a
05:24 lot of work, but we know it's only a couple of ingredients and a little bit of TLC. For more
05:29 easy desserts like this one, keep it right here at delish.com.
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