Hi #Hive,
One of the most popular pastries in the French boulangeries (bakeries) is the Flan Pâtissier, also known as Parisian Flan or Custard Tart.
I used to love these when I was a child. There was something about eating one of those, the light sweetness and light vanilla taste, the crunchy bottom dough and the texture of the flan in the mouth.
Several weeks ago, I saw one of the left over Vanilla pods in the kitchen and wondered what I could do with it. That's when it clicked. I'm going to bake a Flan Pâtissier and make my wife and daughter discover it.
A few searches on Google for the best recipe and I settled for this one. It is in French, but don't worry I am going to take you through the process.
Just like my previous recipe reviews, I didn't follow the steps to the dot and neither did I respect the ingredients quantities, especially when it comes to sugar as it is always too sweet for my liking.
Let's start with the bottom dough, the sweet pastry crust:
Ingredients:
- 250g of all purpose flour
- 100g of butter
- 1 egg
- 20g of sugar
- a pinch of salt
Add all the ingredients together in a bowl an mix using your hands until you can form a dough ball. That's it, as simple as that. Put the dough in the fridge to cool down while you work on the Flan.
The Flan
Ingredients:
- 1 liter of milk (I used soja milk)
- 6 eggs
- 120g of sugar
- 100g of cornstarch
- 20cl of all purpose cream
- 1 vanilla pod
In a big saucepan, pour the milk and add the vanilla pod after cutting it in half and scrapping the inside. Bring it to a boiling state and then take it off the stove.
In a bowl, mix together the eggs, the cornstarch and the sugar. Once all blended together, pour the hot milk to the mix and keep mixing. Add the cream, blend well and pour everything back into the saucepan. Turn on the stove at low fire and keep mixing until the content of the saucepan starts reducing and becomes thicker.
Finding the right balance as to when to stop the fire is not easy. Too early and your flan will be too liquid and too late, it'll be a hard paste. Sadly for me I went too far.
When it's ready, remove it from the stove, lay down and flatten the sweet pastry crust to the bottom of your pastry dish and the pour the flan on top. As you can see on the picture, my flan was not liquid enough to really make a nice smooth surface and I struggled to spread it properly.
Put your dish in your preheated oven (180°C) and let it bake for about 50 minutes.
Flan Pâtissier are best served cold and so it is recommended to let it cool first and then put in in the fridge overnight before consuming the next day.
Feedback:
Et voila! as you can see it isn't very difficult and doesn't require many ingredients. I did screw up and bit with the preparation of the flan but the result tasted really good anyways and having halved the quantity of sugar, the sweetness was perfect. Both my daughter and wife enjoyed it.
Would I do it again?
Yes, for sure, and I wouldn't change anything.
Thank you and bon appetit!