Flan pâtissier
A flan pâtissier is essentially a giant vanilla custard tart but with a French accent!
I have many culinary memories of my childhood in France and I’d like to tell you that this was something I used to make with my mum but the truth is that it wasn’t. My mum was a full time mum in charge of all the household tasks and even though all our meals were home cooked, they were quick and easy. She was also a terrible baker, who tended to burn most things – she used to say it was “well cooked” but really it was burnt… In her defence, why would she have bothered making something could easily have bought in any boulangerie?
I’m the mum now and my boys really love it, especially my youngest, hence why I often make it on his birthday. He went to school with the last piece in his packed lunch today!
Ingredients:
- Shortcrust pastry, you can buy a block, or you could make my basic shortcrust pastry recipe. I think traditionally it is supposed to be with puff pastry but I prefer it with shortcrust pastry; I like the contrast between the snap of the outside and the creaminess of the inside.
- 700 ml milk
- 300 ml double cream
- 1 vanilla pod
- 100 g corn flour
- 160 g caster sugar
- 4 egg yolks
- 2 eggs
Method:
Roll out the pastry the thickness of a one pound coin and place in a Springform tin (mine is 24cm). Trim the excess, prick the bottom and refrigerate – this helps the pastry not shrink while in the oven.
Split the vanilla pod in half, scrape out the seeds inside and place both seeds and pod in a large saucepan. Add the milk and cream and heat up slowly until it starts to simmer. At that point, take off the heat and go off to do something (ideally fun) for a couple of hours. This step isn’t strictly speaking needed but I think it’s worth it. What will happen during those two hours is that the vanilla will infuse into the liquid so you’ll get a deep vanilla scent as opposed to a hint of vanilla – we’re aiming for Madagascar, not just the travel brochure. Given the price of vanilla pods, I think it makes sense.
When your two hours are up, remove the vanilla pod halves but don’t throw them away! Rinse and pat them dry and then place them in your sugar jar; in time, you’ll get vanilla sugar!
When you are ready, preheat the oven at 160 degrees then bake the pastry blind for 15min. Remove the baking beans after that and bake for a further 5 min.
While the pastry is baking, gently warm up your liquid again. In a large bowl, crack the eggs, add the sugar, and whisk. Then add the corn flour and whisk again until you end up with a smooth mixture without any lump.
Slowly add a bit of your warm vanilla infused liquid to the bowl and whisk quickly at the start – you don’t want to end up with cooked bits of eggs in your cake. Repeat the operation until you have added all the liquid to the bowl.
Pour the content of the bowl back in the saucepan and gently heat that up, stirring constantly. When it starts to thicken, remove from the heat and pour into your tin.
Bake in the oven for 45min at 180 degrees – the top of the custard should be brown.
Leave to cool and tuck in.
