Short story

The Parisian flan is a typical french dessert that you can find in any “pâtisserie” in France. It consists of baked custard and a shortcrust pastry base.  It is typically made with eggs, cream or milk, starch and vanilla.

Yield: 8 portions

Ingredients

• 230g shortcrust pastry
• 500ml milk (could add some part of cream instead)
• 1 vanilla bean
• 200g sugar
• 4 eggs
• 70g corn starch (maizena)

Step by step

• Scratch the vanilla mass from the bean. Put it in a saucepan with milk.
• Place it over medium heat and cook until the milk boils, then turn off the heat and leave aside.
• In a bowl, mix corn starch with sugar and eggs. Beat for a while till the mixture is homogeneous. Add the still hot milk and mix well together.
• Put the mixture back in the saucepan and place it over the heat for some minutes, stirring constantly, until it starts to become thick.
• When the mixture coats your spoon, take it away from the heat and leave it aside to cool down. You can place it as well in the refrigerator to speed up the process.
• Meanwhile, preheat your oven to 210ºC.
• Roll out the pastry on a light floured surface until it becomes a circle of about 30cm diameter and then put it into 25cm x 4cm round flan dish. Make sure that the pastry goes a bit over the dish borders, because is shrinks when cooking.
• Fill the shortcrust pastry with the cream and place it into the oven for around 30 minutes, until the top of the flan is a nice brown color.

Enjoy!