Flan

While I was in Taiwan, they have this thing called "pudding". The thing with pudding is that pudding in Taiwan is not like American goopy mess. Instead it is more like flan. Actually it is flan. When you shake it at a certain lateral forces, it regains it's shape like jello like viscoelastic materials.

Anyways, the closest thing to "pudding" is flan. I prefer my flans to be creamy and not so much like jello.

Flan (makes 6 three inch ramekins)

Ingredients for flan
3 whole large eggs
2 Egg yolks
220 g Whole milk (1 cup)
290 g Heavy cream (1.5 to 1.75 cups)
75 g Sugar
1 Vanilla bean, split lengthwise (2 tsp Vanilla extract)
2 tsp Dark rum

Caramel
5:3 ratio of sugar to water by weight

Directions for flan!
1. Heat milk, cream, vanilla bean until 150F or well you see steam.
2. Separate egg yolks and egg whites (save egg whites for macarons or similar) while you wait for milk and cream mix to heat.
3. Dissolve sugar into dairy mixture by stirring continuously.
4. Add in rum and heat until 160F or until it starts to steam quite a bit (do not boil!!!)
5. In a mixing bowl, mix the egg yolks and whole eggs on low speed.
6. Slowly drizzle in dairy mixture while the egg yolks are mixing (do not make bubbles in the mixing process!)
7. Put mixer on stir.
8. Preheat oven to 300F
9. Boil water to prepare the water bath

Making caramel!
1. Dissolve sugar in the water on medium-high heat.
2.When dissolved, don't stir the caramel.
3. Turn off the heat when the caramel reaches a dark-golden color (darker than the picture's caramel)
4. Pour caramel into the ramekins, until the bottoms are slightly filled. (Note: the caramel will harden, don't worry about that because the oven will redistribute the caramel for the flan)
5. Turn off the mixer and put flan mix in caramel

Oven baking (reminder 300F)
1. Place ramekins in deep pan.
2. Place deep pan in the oven.
3. Pour boiling water into the deep pan until water reaches a little below the edge of ramekins.
4. Bake for 45-60 minutes, depending on your oven.
5. When 45 minutes is up, test to see if the flan jiggles a lot. If not, you are done!

Enjoy this creamy delicious treat! If you want, you can use 550g of whole milk and no cream at all or replace the heavy cream with half and half to get a less creamier texture.