My household is half Mexican and I am very familiar with flan. Absolutely love it. When traveling to Paris, I find the flan is good but not the same as what I enjoy at home. Even when I visit Mexico, the flan is different from what I usually eat. Not to say I do not enjoy the flan. It is excellent but just a different style from what I am accustomed to. As you can see, flan is as diverse as the many different diverse regions that make it.
The Diversity of Flan
The widespread enjoyment of flan makes me wonder about the many different types of flan. Just how many are there? As mentioned, I’ve tasted quite a few flans and one thing I know for certain. Regardless of the recipe, the best flan is always dense and creamy in taste. And delicious tasting too.
A Flan for Every Flavor
There are many techniques for a person to learn to make an easy flan. Once you have the basic recipe, you can change the flavor for various purposes like Kahlua Flan for Christmas, Pumpkin Flan for Thanksgiving or for Valentine’s Day – Coconut Flan. The other flavors of flan are: strawberry flan, banana flan, orange flan, zucchini flan, cheese flan, ginger flan and many more! How many can you name?
Flans from Different Parts of the World
Spanish Flan is a custard that includes a caramel covering on top. It jiggles when you shake it and gets separated more easily than some other flans.
Dominican Flan is more creamy and rich and tastes like a pudding. Condensed milk is at times heated to make dulce de leche along with eggs. No caramel syrup is poured on it.
In Chile flan is made with dulce de leche (manjar) rather than the caramel that is generally used in Latin America, Spain and Argentina.
Across the Pacific there is Filipino Leche Flan. Similar to other flans, this one is baked in a pan that is caramel-lined, called a bain marie. The recipe differs according to each family. Some recipes use only yolks, others more yolk than whites and a few use the whole egg. The other common ingredients are sugar and fresh, condensed or evaporated milk.
A friend of mine told me that her grandmother used to add two chicken eggs with duck eggs and water buffalo milk to make the flan richer and then finally added dayap, an aromatic lime to the recipe. Now that’s different!
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