My mom and Abuelita (Tita) have been been making flan since I was a little girl. One day when we were grown, my dad brought home a coconut flan he found somewhere in town. I was in heaven. Traditional flan is a bit "eggy" in flavor for me, but flan de coco....had my heart from the first bite.
I experimented with making my own not long after that, and my family fell in love. Then I took it to a cake auction for charity at work, and my co-workers went crazy for it. I now have two co-workers who request it for their birthday celebration at work.
Now, I always make two at a time. One for home; one for work.
Here's my recipe.
Flan de Coco (Coconut Flan)
INGREDIENTS
¾ c. sugar
1 ½ c. coconut (about 1/2 package)
6 eggs
1 Tbsp vanilla extract
1 can (15 oz) cream of coconut (NOT coconut milk)
1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk
1 can (14 oz) sweetened condensed milk
BASIC INSTRUCTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Farenheit.
2. Toast coconut. Dump coconut into large saucepan. Cook over medium-low heat, stirring and tossing constantly, until coconut is a mixed light brown color.
3. Caramelize sugar. Pour sugar into a 8x8 white pyrex or corningware dish. Place over low to medium heat on gas stove burner. Stir constantly with a fork, until sugar turns to a light caramel color liquid. Remove from heat, and immediately turn pan in circles to coat the inside walls of the pan with the sugar. Continue turning pan, coating sides of dish, until sugar cools too much to roll around. Set aside.
4. Make filling. Beat eggs until slightly foamy. Blend in milks. Fold in 1/2 cup toasted coconut. Put remaining cup of toasted coconut in a tupperware. Set aside.
5. Assemble for cooking. Pour egg/milk mixture into the 8x8 pan. Set 8x8 dish inside a 9x12 pyrex pan. Pour water into the 9x12 pan (not into the sugared pan!) until it reaches an inch high (the right amount of water is very important). You will hear cracking noises as the caramelized sugar adjusts to the temperature of the water.
6. Bake 60-80 minutes, until a knife inserted into center of flan comes out with clear, runny liquid. Remove from oven and cool on counter for 1-2 hours. Refridgerate overnight.
7. Serve. Loosen flan from sides of pan. Invert pan onto a serving dish. Scrape any liquid sugar onto top of flan. Sprinkle toasted coconut all over top of pan, and a bit around sides of serving dish. Serve chilled. Refridgerate leftovers, if there are any!
DETAILED TIPS, by instruction number above
2. Toast coconut.
Put coconut in a large saucepan over low heat.Stir frequently as coconut begins to brown in
spots at the edges.Then stir
constantly, turning coconut over and around to get everything nice and toasted
without burning it.When it is done, the
coconut will be approx half white and half light brown.If you’re getting smoke or it’s browning too
fast, turn the heat down. Coconut will brown slightly more as it cools, after removing from heat. You don't want it to burn. When it is completely cool, it will be firm and crunchy/crispy. Do not put it on flan until you are ready to serve it.
3. Caramelize Sugar.
Gas stove is required.
If you don’t have a gas stove, you can search the internet for a way to safely caramelize the sugar on an electric stove, and transfer it to your baking dish. But this is tough, since the temperature of cooked sugar is a finicky thing. I don't have tips here. Keep in mind, never put pyrex or any other glass dishes directly onto an electric stove top burner. It will
most likely shatter the glass, possibly throwing spears of glass several feet away with force (it happened to us once, by accident. we had shards of glass in the kitchen cabinet. no one was hurt.)
For cooking the sugar with a gas stove.
Stir the sugar constantly as it heats, keeping
the sugar moving across the bottom of the dish to avoid burning.Eventually, some of the sugar starts to melt, and some of it turns into sticky lumps. Break up the lumps while stirring. Soon, streaks of light brown liquid will appear. Keep stirring and breaking up lumps. When you still have about 10-20 lumps left, but most of it is melted, remove from heat. Continue stirring constantly until all lumps are melted. If they are not melting within a minute, place back over heat for a few seconds. Then remove from heat and continue stirring.
If the sugar gets too hot, it will burn. It turns a darker shade of brown, and you can smell that it is burning. If it gets seriously burned, you need to start over with new sugar and a clean pan. The best way to avoid this, is if it is getting too hot too quickly, remove the pan from the heat, and stir it on the counter for a while. Then put it back over the heat, then remove it again. Sugar tends to go from lumps to burned within a very short time. Just keep stirring, and taking on/off burner until it is all melted.
To coat the sides of the pan, just keep twisting the pan around and around, letting gravity draw the sugar onto the sides of the pan, about three to four inches high. The sugar will roll around and around as you twist the pan. Just keep rolling until the sugar cools too much to move.
5. Adding water.
Too much water will slow down cooking time, as much as doubling it if you have closer to two inches of water. This overcooks the outside of the flan, making it gummy and chewy (not desirable). Too little water, and it will all evaporate before the flan is cooked. Then you have to add more water, which slows down the cooking time as the water warms up.
6. Baking.
If you bake two flans at one time, place them on the same center rung in the oven.
Flan is done when a
butter knife inserted in the center comes out with clear liquid. It may also have a tiny bit
of crumbled flan on the knife.When not fully cooked
yet, knife will come out with an obvious amount of thick, lotion-looking liquid on the knife.When overcooked, the knife comes out with crumbles.Taking the flan out of the oven at the right moment
is the hardest part of this recipe.
Overcooked flan
will have a rubbery consistency when eaten; perfectly cooked will be smooth and
creamy in the center almost like ice cream.
In the photo above, the flan is slightly overcooked. To the right side, which is the edge, you can see where it is a crumbly or bubbly texture. In the center, it is smooth. The smooth part is the texture and consistency of ice cream, and has the best flavor. The edge is also good, but is a bit rubbery and chewy in texture. Ideally, you want the perfect amount of water, and time in the oven, so almost the entire flan is smooth, from the center, almost to the edge. This is a good photo to show you the difference in texture. You can tell if it is cooked properly the minute you cut into it. I have only gotten it to turn out perfectly (smooth all the way to the edges) once, out of probably twenty flans I have made. It tastes good no matter what, but the more you make it, the more you will see how particular you want to be about the cooking time, which equals texture.
The above photos show you how the flan looks before the coconut is put
on top. The dark spots on the first photo is where I poked it with the
knife to test it. The liquid is how the caramelized sugar turns out
after it has baked. This is also the same color you want to get it to
on the stove top.
