Flan Recipe

This delicious Mexican Flan recipe, with its rich and creamy custard that’s covered with a deep caramel sauce, is a really easy to make dessert that everyone will love! A creamy dessert to finish off your meal.

This is a great make-ahead dessert, which makes it perfect for parties, holidays, and celebrations. Flan is best served cold from the fridge, so you can make it a few days before you want to serve it, and save time and stress on the day of the event. And it’s a great way to celebrate Cinco de Mayo.

I was given a copy of L.A.’s Landmark Restaurants for review, but all of my opinions are my own.

We appreciate your support

Please let me know if you have any questions about this recipe. I read all the comments myself and I try to help as soon as I can. I have readers from all levels of comfort and experience in the kitchen on my site, and I’ve tried to answer some of your questions already in the post. But if I’ve missed anything, please feel free to leave a comment and ask.

Classic Flan Recipe

Flan is a rich sweet custard topped with a clear liquid caramel topping sauce that’s a popular dessert in Spain and Latin America. An egg, milk, sugar, and vanilla mixture makes up the creamy custard, and it’s baked to perfection in a water bath.

This Authentic recipe comes from El Cholo restaurant via the book, L.A.’s Landmark Restaurants.

Flan, also called crème caramel, caramel pudding, or caramel custard is a rich and delicate custard dessert. And this dessert is delicious when served with a nice cup of Mexican Coffee.

L.A.’s Landmark Restaurants

When I first heard about the book {affiliate link} L.A.’s Landmark Restaurants: Celebrating the Legendary Locations Where Angelenos Have Dined for Generations, I immediately knew I’d love it. I was born and raised in Southern California, not far from Los Angeles, and I’m a foodie, so this book is perfect. And you don’t have to be from LA to love it!

The book includes 60 iconic LA restaurants with over 110 recipes that were made famous by each restaurant. I love that they include historic and contemporary photographs like menus, matchbooks, and advertisements with a history of each restaurant.

Besides reminiscing about days gone by restaurants, this book has given me new restaurants to try!

Make sure to hop over and grab a copy of the book for yourself!

El Cholo

When I got this book, I just knew that El Cholo would be one of the featured restaurants. I immediately flipped through the pages looking for it. Sure enough, it’s there!

I have been visiting El Cholo for many years. It’s a delicious Spanish-American restaurant. My favorite dish from them is Annie’s Early California Enchiladas which are mixed Garden Vegetables, Spinach, Corn, Sauteed Mushrooms, Crushed Pecans. So good! They also have awesome seafood enchiladas!

The name, El Cholo, is a term that Spanish settlers in California called field workers.

I love reading about the history of this restaurant, as well as the others featured in the book, and all the recipes sound so delicious.

It’s great to be able to make these restaurant meals at home too. There are a bunch of recipes I want to try. Like the Cheese Souffles from The Bistro, the raspberry cream cheese coffee cake from Dinah’s Family Restaurant, and the Meatless Mexican Spinach Enchiladas from Casa Vega.

What is flan?

Simply put, flan is a baked custard dessert that’s topped with caramel.

The custard is silky smooth, light and creamy. The caramel is soft and liquid-y. Together, they make a beautiful presentation when you turn the dessert upside down on a plate and the caramel just pours out over the custard.

It can be made as one large dessert that’s served sliced, family style. Or, it can be made into individual servings, like these.

I’d also compare it to panna cotta or crème brulee (without the burnt sugar topping).

How to make flan

This homemade flan only requires 5 ingredients, and is so simple to make!

The full printable recipe ingredients and instructions are available in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. You can find important tips and tricks in the post.

Bain-marie

Make your bain-marie. A bain-marie is just a fancy French name for a hot water bath. It makes it so the custards gently cook rather than the hot air of the oven being directly on them.

Make sure the ramekins fit into the large baking dish, and fill the dish with hot water about halfway up the sides of the ramekins.

My oven isn’t big enough to handle a large baking dish 18×13-inches. So, I used two 9×13 pans and placed 5 ramekins in each of them.

The recipe can also be cut in half so you only make 5 ramekins.

Adding the hot water to the bain-marie will keep the caramel warm so it doesn’t harden as quickly.

Make the caramel

Place the sugar in a small saucepan and drizzle the water around the edges. Do not stir. Swirl the caramel sauce rather than stirring. If you stir, crystals can form and you’ll have a grainy texture.

Heat on high. Watch the sugar change color to light brown mahogany (about 5 to 8 minutes), then remove from heat.

Make sure to keep an eye on the sugar here; it can burn fairly quickly. Don’t walk away and check Facebook or anything.

Carefully spoon about 1-2 tablespoons of caramel into the bottom of each ramekin.

Safety Tip: Be sure not to get any melted sugar on your skin to avoid burns. The sugar is super-hot and can cause burns very easily. So don’t touch it!

Make the custard

Whisk eggs and sugar together in a medium bowl.

In a large saucepan, heat milk until it comes to a boil, and then remove from heat. Stir the egg mixture into the heated milk. Add vanilla.

Some recipes will have you strain the custard through a fine-mesh strainer at this point. El Cholo does not have that step, and I found that the custards don’t need to be strained.

Add the liquid custard to the ramekins, pouring it over the caramel.

Bake the ramekins in the pan (in the bain-marie) for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

Remove ramekins from bain-marie.

Serving

Cool completely before inverting onto a plate to serve.

To serve: run a knife around the inside edge of the ramekins.

Invert the serving plate on top of the ramekin of flan and turn the ramekin and plate over. If it doesn’t release immediately, let it sit inverted for a minute and it should eventually slide out. You can also jiggle it back and forth a bit to encourage it to come out.

Remove the ramekin and scrape any caramel left in the ramekin out over the flan. You won’t be able to get all of the caramel out, that’s okay. You can serve the flan with whipped cream or berries if you like.

How do I prevent my flan from cracking? 

Since these are nice small ramekins of flan, you won’t really have to worry about them cracking.

Make sure you use the bain-marie (water bath), don’t overbake them, check for doneness on the early side of the baking time, and remove them from the oven and the water bath as soon as they are done.

Transfer them to a wire rack to cool completely once they’re out of the oven.

Follow the easy recipe and these tips, and you should have beautiful flan. And really, the top of the flan in on the plate, or under the dessert anyway, so it won’t matter a bit.

Storage

After they have cooled, cover them with plastic wrap and pop them in the fridge for up to 4 days.

Since it’s made up to four days ahead of time, it’s a wonderful dessert for company that you can just pull out of the fridge!

More Mexican recipes

If you love this Flan recipe, then you won’t want to miss my other Mexican-inspired recipes. Here’s a great dinner and Cinco de Mayo celebration menu: Watermelon Agua Fresca, Seasoned black beans, chipotle rice, corn guacamole, and Creamy Fiesta Verde Enchiladas.

Let’s keep in touch

If you like seeing my recipes subscribe via email in the upper right.
Or, connect with me on your favorite social media channel for recipes, photos, & much more:
Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter!
And find my shop on Amazon for recommendations on cool tools

If you try this recipe,
please come back & leave a comment below letting us know how it goes.
Share a picture & tag @lifecurrents on Instagram.
Or you can upload a “tried it” photo (I would love to see)
via the pin.

Recipe